The sky is falling, but we’re informed

Published 7:00 am Saturday, January 14, 2017

Headlines. Today we see more headlines than people 10 or 20 years ago ever did on a daily basis.

The popularity of the Internet has brought access to more and more news services, allowing us to stay up to date on the day’s most trivial news.

One of the things I’ve noticed is the abundance of headlines drawing readers into a story that may not leave us with a warm and fuzzy feeling.

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Climate change is causing ocean levels to rise; high stress causes heart attacks; Nutella possibly causes cancer, and near Earth objects are whizzing by our planet relatively unnoticed. It’s mostly all madness, but at least we are informed. As the saying goes, knowledge is power.

So what do we do with this flood of information? In all honesty, there’s no way we can ever read every story released.

Which means when we read stories about things we can’t change, we are missing out on stories that could potentially mean something to the future of mankind.

I said I wouldn’t make a resolution this year, but here’s one I will actually try to keep. Instead of reading about the latest source of cancer, I make an effort to read stories about things that I can learn something from. While the story in itself won’t change our future, the message may prompt me to make a change for the better.

My point is, instead of focusing on how the latest research shows that being alive causes cancer, or how a near Earth object passed between our planet and the moon unnoticed, maybe we can focus on something in life from which we can benefit.

Besides, next week that same research could be debunked, butter will be healthier than margarine, Nutella may cure cancer, and NASA will invent a phaser beam capable of destroying any space object threatening life on this planet.