Follow Your Passions

A friend of mine got a tee shirt for me recently that has a picture of a TV set and says “Think outside the box.” If you have watched television in the last several days, you have very likely seen a saturation of news about what is happening with Anna Nicole Smith. I don’t want to be insensitive. I’m not sure if her life or her death was more tragic, but clearly she has become the focal point of a lot of negativity and turmoil. I only hope the child involved will end up in a relatively good environment to grow up in, though I’m not sure the current scenarios favor that.

But I would like to suggest that there is a much bigger issue, a much deeper tragedy entwined in the stories being portrayed in our media. To explain, let me take you back to 1994. I was in my Sophomore year of college and had just arrived to Arizona State University to earn myself a degree in Journalism. Writing and covering stories that impacted our world and communities, delivering the truth to the masses, maybe framing the news in a more positive light - these were the goals of a twenty year old Iain Hamp.

About the same time I began to dive into the start of my journalism education, the OJ Simpson trial was in full swing and a media frenzy. It had bugged me a bit that there was so much coverage of the trial, when so many other things worth talking about were going on in the world, but I tended to just laugh at the absurdity of it more than anything else.

I was working as a security guard near ASU when I wasn’t in class, and a friend of mine was doing the same and lived in the same apartment complex as me. One day, in the Phoenix heat of summer, as we were walking home, my friend collapsed on the ground and had to be taken to the hospital. It turned out his lung had collapsed. I went to the hospital and waited around in the waiting room to find out what was happening with him, and the entire time life was happening around me, the OJ Trial was on the TV. People were coming in and out of the hospital for all sorts of things that needed healing, and yet we were all so worried about whether or not OJ was lying. It was a surreal moment, I turned away from the TV, and my heart swelled with empathy for the stories happening all around me.

That was the last summer of my journalism career. Of course with the advent of blogging, I can write the sorts of uplifting things and deliver the building messages I want to send out to the masses (all fifteen of you). But the mass media still delivers more and more of the same thing - news about people we don’t personally know, detailing parts of a stranger’s life I have absolutely no right or interest in knowing. And I guess I just have to ask - what good can come of it? What can we learn from it, what positive can we take away from knowing the mess that is the Anna Nicole Smith custody battle, or who Britney Spears is married to this week, or even whether or not OJ did it. At the end of the day, has it enhanced your life in any way?

Maybe I’m missing it. But I don’t see the point in me paying attention to any of it, and I found a great way to get away from paying attention to it. When the news starts talking about this sort of story, I turn it off, and I immediately go spend time doing something I absolutely love to do. Maybe that’s listening to my favorite music, or reading a few pages in a favorite book, or going for a walk, or calling a friend I haven’t talked to in a while…

Or, as was the case when I started this post, getting online and writing a blog post. Have a great week folks. You get better at anything you practice, so practice attracting positive things into your life.