I woke up last Monday morning, and reached for my phone – an admittedly bad habit of mine – and any guesses what my feed was flooded with from the onset?
It smacked me right in the face, the phone that is – and then I saw the clip.
Now I am not going to delve into the multitude of narratives and theories being propagated because let’s face it – there are far better examples to use to trigger the debates self-anointed social justice warriors love to enter into.
But what irked me (and continually does, the more I see it) was how easily people got sucked into the frenzy – some of them wielding far greater influence than myself.
The fact that multiple “news” streams could cash in on the mass hysteria, dedicating entire shows and column space to it, served as another reminder that we simply cannot resist being drawn into the courts of popular opinion – and unwittingly expose our fallibility while proceeding to judge another.
Let’s backtrack – the word “feed” was mentioned earlier.
This should scream at us, yet how often have we bothered to be mindful of its effect on our ensuing thoughts?
By picking up the phone that morning and “blindly” consuming what was fed to me, I allowed myself to lose an element of control over my thoughts, to the point where it has dictated the theme of this column.
I have often stood by the notion that knowing when to speak is as important, if not more important as knowing what to say, which brings me to what the entire schpiel also reminded me of…
Often people will proclaim their entitlement to their opinion, however, it bears repeating that not every opinion is entitled to validation – not even this one.
Around a year ago I was entering the final preparations of a new chapter in my life – marriage – and while everyone around me had something to say – one piece of advice was worth holding onto: “Don’t listen to the noise”.
Too often, more than we’d like to admit, we feed into the noise and allow it to shape our worldview, while at the same time failing to recognise some of these episodes as only being noise, so much so that before you know it, a week of your time on this planet has evaporated into the ether.
The endless threads on social media show us just how much valuable time is being wasted on making noise, a place where only those who built those very soapboxes are realising its value.
Some never turn down the noise and often wonder what caused their perpetual state of heightened sensitivity.
This is often accompanied by distortion – not the audible kind …
