Living Well in a Troubled World
When I talk about what’s going on in the world, my husband gets nauseated. He tells me to stop. He wants to hear music in the car, not the news. It isn’t that he doesn’t care about the wars and famines and the degradation of the natural world. He just wants some peace. I do ask myself, what’s the use of talking about these things? Yet when I abstain from keeping myself informed, a kind of agitated guilt rises up. The streets where I live don’t have netting strewn across light poles to catch deadly drones. No bombs are falling. Does my having the luxury of safety give me the right to avert my eyes? My father spent thirty years as a 7th- and 8th-grade social studies teacher. He believed fervently that a democracy such as ours required an informed electorate. As such, he made sure that every student who crossed his path learned to value how the three branches of our government functioned, with the checks and balances, the freedom of the press, and …
