Noise is not knowledge

~ we can widen our view, or we can tighten our circle

If you feel on edge, you are not broken.

You are noticing.

The world is loud.

We still choose what we amplify.

Before we have even found your socks, we are asked to absorb prices, politics, technology, weather, and the shifting rules of what counts as true.

Chest feels tight. 24/7, when we are flooded with alerts and headlines are starved for context, and trained to mistake noise for knowledge.

There is no clean return to “normal,” because the old normal was a brief lull, not a permanent state.

So here is the real question: what can you contribute that does not make it worse?

Start here, now.

We get to choose steadiness on purpose.

We can be a calm node of reason.

It’s amazing how often we have to double-check, to verify before sharing, to consider the difference between reality and news

We can always read past the headline. Ask one extra question. If a story spikes our adrenaline, that is our cue to slow down, not speed up.

We can’t trust everything, no matter the source - reporting each day’s noise and nonsense, which we can, if we hesitate to outsource our judgment to the loudest account in your feed.

Yesterday, from a stage in Davos, Switzerland, our Prime Minister Mark Carney called out the noise and the crazy. He wasn’t talking about liberal vs. conservative or any other philosophy; he was being smart and incredibly serious. And, for this listener, it was proudly Canadian. Give it a listen.

In unstable times, the most radical move is to become reliably useful.