There are plenty of real problems without having to imagine them. Or have them imagined for us.

I try to remember is that not everything written on the internet is true. Just like not everything, I can imagine will happen. There’s a special part of our mind - a powerful, projective part - that helps us look ahead. This imaginative element is unique: it can help us envision things we WISH to happen - for ourselves, family, friends, and peers - and then guide our actions towards achieving them. This, as they call it, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it usually does a lot of GOOD!

On the other hand, it’s a delicate tool of our mind - one that has ALSO been on the lookout for dangers for thousands of years. It can be used to keep us safe, to get ahead of problems. Yet it can also be fooled by the wrong signals:

Like the ones sent out by an anxiety-peddling press. For example:

This morning’s media headline stated that something is happening “FURIOUSLY.” In the first paragraph it’s “extraordinarily” then it becomes “accelerating” in the second. A few sentences later it falls to “faster” and a gentle “rapid” by the middle of the page. By the end, it’s reduced to merely “probably” and “could” and “if” by the last sentence, imagining a time decades from today.

This isn’t news. It’s not journalism. It isn’t chronicling data or facts or even math. Yet it’s in a prestigious “news” outlet’s top headlines meant to inform us about the present - and direct us towards changing the future. But whether it’s about the climate or the economy or the pandemic or just the ballgame, it leaves us impossibly positioned to know if it’s -

Even real?

There will be plenty of possibilities, good and bad, that we could see for the future. To grow, we must learn how to discern which are real, and which are imagined. Of those imagined, we must again ask: Do they excite us into action, or depress us with fear? Many years ago, the world - at least, the internet - made a decision to let the chips fall where they may, as long as the users see ads, and don’t have to pay.

Until the cost of free everything has become more expensive than a subscription for anything!

Be open, yet cautious.
Be smart, but selective.
Be inquisitive, but cautious.
Be hopeful, not anxious.

And most of all,
Be sure to read beyond the headlines:
For what initially seems to be Furious
May just turn out to have been Spurious.

Keep YOUR wits about you, out there.
Things aren’t as bad for REAL as the
advertisers would have them seem!

#alwaysinspiring