You know that feeling like when you’ve heard a song too many times, maybe it’s stuck in your head, or it’s just somehow repeating it, maybe your neighbour has it playing over and over again, and you’re just hearing the same thing again and again.
And then the song ends, you get that one moment of relief, and then oh, there it comes back again.
Everybody has a song like this that they’ve had this experience of just repeating.
And, well, I don’t even want to go into any more detail, because if I start to think too much about one of these songs, maybe it’ll get stuck in my head again.
It seems like something happens when we listen to a song over and over.
It reaches this point where it just becomes intolerable.
It becomes painful to continue to hear the same thing repeat.
And that’s how sometimes it feels with the news about what’s going on.
There’s just this repeating and repeating and repeating of the same or very similar things, to the point where to me it’s become painful.
So certain words: we have “COVID-19”, “coronavirus”, and especially “social distancing”.
I almost shudder hearing the word.
It’s just this endless repetition.
And this seems to be a lot of what’s going on in the news right now.
What are we really getting that’s new information? What’s really news? Of course, this whole situation is the very definition of news.
It is the new things.
This is what’s new.
This is the big change in the way the world’s been normally going.
So naturally, we look to news to help us to understand.
And maybe it took a few weeks of hearing these repeated pronouncements to just start to get adjusted to the new reality of “OK, this is the way things are now.” News.
But eventually it’s like that song that keeps playing again and again.
And you tune back into the news, and there it is again.
Very similar statements being made again and again.
Why do we keep listening? Why are we still in the news? Well, it seems like there’s that feeling of wanting to be plugged in, wanting to keep on top of the developments.
I don’t want to be out of the loop.
I want to know if something significant is happening.
I want to be ready to make the necessary adjustments to deal with the new thing.
And yet, it seems like watching the news is that kind of unsatisfying thing, it’s like that habit you turn to looking for satisfaction, but it never fully satisfies.
It always leaves you wanting more.
I don’t know if there’s an analogy there with smoking: you know, you really want to smoke, but then you smoke, and then you don’t actually feel satisfied, just want to smoke again, and it doesn’t really make life any better, just temporarily appeases the desire, but it doesn’t fill you up.
And that seems to be a lot of this news hook that we have.
These thoughts are cycling in my mind: what’s going on? What’s changing? I want to look for something that feeds me more about what’s new.
And yet, when I actually look at it, I see the same old song playing again and again.
So it seems like eventually this has to stop.
Now of course, can still keep in touch with the news and see if there are the next, you know, surprising development that’s worth really looking into, but for the most part, it seems like it’s really time to turn off the song and just make a new song with the time we have, make our own stuff to fill this time, and not look for it to be filled by some kind of news from outside.
When there’s news that’s new, when there’s new news, then great, but repeating news in a slightly different flavour, like hearing repeated covers of the same song over and over: eventually we just need to push the stop button and be done with this song.
It’s time to play some other songs.
#covidnews #songonrepeat #changethetune