Dig Deeper

I was listening to the radio the other day when I heard that starting your day with three minutes of good news allows your day to be more uplifting than if you hadn’t. Well, that’s just jolly fantastic. Just where are we suppose to find this good news?

I’m not saying that it isn’t out there. It is, but it’s buried beneath the headlines. Good news doesn’t make headlines. Why not? I don’t know. I think it’s the thrill ride syndrome.

Television and newspapers have come to believe that a steady diet of bad news excites us; keeps us interested. You can almost see them salivate when something horrible comes across their desk, and we on social media, don’t help, because we repeat it! As we entered 2020 the media was gaining political traction. It is an election year, but they quickly switched to Covid-19, because nothing is better for the news business than a good pandemic. After all, they still had most of the year to beat the political drums. For months we had a steady diet of Covid until most Americans were more than a little tired of it. But just as we were reaching for the remote to shut it off, or to cancel our paper subscription, along came the riots! This new fresh hell buried us in more bad news day after day, and then as the public grew weary of hearing about it, politics was back in the headlines. The Conventions were starting, and we’re off to the races again.

So, I ask again, just how are we supposed to find this good news? Sometimes it comes from your family, like mine did this morning. That’s the easiest way to find it. But if not, you may have to dig. Still, three minutes? Most people don’t have the patience to brush their teeth for the recommended two minutes before they’re moving on. Now we have to go searching for good news? It could take longer than three minutes to find. It’s buried, remember!

Bobby Bones, a popular radio DJ, has a segment on his broadcast called, “Tell Me Something Good”. His co-hosts are tasked with finding good news out there, and they do it. It’s not on the front page. It doesn’t lead on the morning news shows. No, you have to dig deep. You have to look in the dark recesses below the fold, on the inside pages, or scroll down, farther down, keep going on the newsfeed, and then you’ll find it. It’s there, and there’s plenty of it. But why do we have to do all the leg work?

What if you had to look below the fold for the bad news? Imagine if the bad news maybe was reported during the second hour of the broadcast? Wouldn’t our lives be so much brighter, happier, uplifted if the good news led for a change? Most of us would rather eat cake than okra, so why not feed us cake? I don’t mean we should put our heads in the sand, but I don’t think it’s good for any of us to be standing outside in a sandstorm all day, every day! It warps how we look at the world, and how we see ourselves.

“I believe if you just go by the nightly news, your faith in all mankind would be the first thing you lose.” Isn’t that the truth? But, “…the world ain’t half as bad as it looks. I believe most people are good.” Those words come from Luke Bryan’s song, “Most People Are Good”. I believe that too. I couldn’t get up in the morning if I didn’t. Bottom line, those three minutes of good news are worth digging.