There’s a quote by Epictetus I keep coming back to lately: You become what you give your attention to.
When I feel completely saturated with breaking news and worst-case-scenario headlines, that phrase feels like both a reminder and a reckoning. Because when I am constantly absorbing the story that the world is falling apart, I begin to internalize that story as the whole truth, the only truth, and the only thing that is happening in the world.
But it isn’t.
Yes, there is unraveling. There is real, urgent suffering, inequality, hatred, ignorance, climate collapse, and corruption. And it feels like a form of spiritual/psychological bypass to ignore or minimize any of it. But there’s something else happening too. It always is, and always was.
There are people healing ecosystems and communities. There are technologies being developed that could change the trajectory of our climate crisis. There are mutual aid groups, food cooperatives, reconciliation processes, and imaginative solutions quietly doing their thing outside the glare of the mainstream. And it matters deeply to me that I don’t miss those stories. That I actively seek out stories of what is good, beautiful, and equally as true as the inflamed stories of collapse.
Be an agent of cool response in an overheated world. – Caroline Casey
Because what I pay attention to grows… and because I act on what I believe is possible. If I only take in stories of despair, I forget how to imagine ( let alone build) anything different.
The Bias of Bad News
It’s no secret that our brains have a built-in negativity bias. We are hardwired to scan for danger, to remember threats, to protect ourselves. And our media systems exploit that wiring. Fear and outrage generate clicks, duh, and provide such good nourishment for manipulative algorithms.
Sensationalism sells, outrageous spectacle wins presidencies.
So much of what we consume is shaped by what’s most alarming — not what’s most true. And that, in turn, seems to shape our society, and we wonder why it is so.
And while I personally do need/want to stay informed (if only to honor my immigrant grandparents, who were dedicated, daily front to back, readers of the NYT,) if I don’t intentionally seek out balance, I end up living in a warped narrative: the world as a perpetual crisis, goodness as an anomaly.
Again, I’m pretty clear that’s not the full story. That’s not the whole truth — it’s just half of it. Honestly, sometimes I think it’s less than half of it. I don’t know exactly how to measure that (though I do spend a lot of time looking at statistics,) and I’m not 100% sure I’m not just being naive, but I sense there’s a whole lot more good than bad.
It’s like the way a horrific car crash might make the news, but the fact that on the same day 100,000 drivers made it down the same road without incident never makes the news.
Old Stories Can Help
Human beings have always turned to story to make sense of the world. Myth, folktale, and parable hold a kind of durable wisdom… one that speaks to the complexity of being alive.
I am thinking of the work of Michael Meade, or Clarissa Pinkola Estés — how they keep alive ancient myths that reveal the depth of our resilience, our interconnectedness, our capacity to transform. These are not simple tales of silver linings. They are fierce, layered, and often dark. But they remind us: we’ve been through collapse before. We know how to survive loss, betrayal, unraveling, and dark woods. And we know how to find beauty and meaning in the midst of it all.
I find the same kind of truth-telling in places like The Emerald podcast, which “explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, music, and imagination.” These are stories that hold grief and wonder, novelty and timelessness in the same breath.
A story is not a thing… a story is a being whose humming tendrils reach through all the mouths that speak it and all the ears that receive it and all the moods that change from it and all and the lives it touches and changes over thousands of years. I mean this literally, a story is a being. – Joshua Michael Schrei, The Emerald Podcast, Inanimate Objects Aren’t Inanimate (Or Objects)
And I Also Need New News Stories
I need news stories that aren’t all gloom and doom. I need stories of regeneration, cooperation, courage. Stories that produce a gleeful gasp of joy when I read them. Joy-scrolling. (Or better yet, at least for me, no-scrolling.) We need evidence-based hope, active hope… a grounded, realistic optimism.
I am inspired by the work of researchers like Steven Pinker, who’s shown with data real, measurable progress is happening in so many areas of human life and culture, even though it rarely makes the news.
I deeply appreciate the solutions journalism found in Fix the News, Reasons to Be Cheerful, or The Progress Network‘s “What Could Go Right?” They bring me so much balance with their stories of what’s working, what’s improving, and what’s possible.
They remind me: the Great Turning and the Great Unraveling are happening at the same time. (Thank you, Joanna Macy.) The question is: Which story will I help energize and amplify?
“Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act. We belong to this world.” — Joanna Macy
A Call to Attention
This is not a call to look away from suffering. It’s a call to widen our lens. It’s a call to pay attention — to the sorrow and the beauty. To make room for both. To tell and seek out better stories. Because the truth is not just the worst thing happening at any given moment.
The truth is also:
- For the first time, clean energy met all of the world’s growth in electricity demand, while fossil fuel generation declined.
- Seagrass is rebounding off the coast of France, in some places growing from 6% coverage to 81% after reducing human pressure.
- Endangered coho salmon are returning to California rivers in record numbers, thanks to sustained habitat restoration work.
- Over 315,000 Chicago public school students now have automatic access to libraries through their school IDs.
- A new treatment for childhood leukemia shows a 96% disease-free survival rate, with fewer long-term side effects than traditional chemotherapy.
Each of these is a real, data‑backed instance of progress. They’re not distractions… they’re part of a wider, fuller story. (All those facts come from Fix The News — do yourself a favor and subscribe.)
You become what you pay attention to.
I can choose to pay attention to the full truth… to pay attention to beauty, joy and what is working, as much as I do to sorrow and what is falling apart. Maybe that can shape how I move, speak, vote, and show up. Maybe it can be a reminder that I still have a choice and a future worth living into. It feels like my duty, an obligation… for the earth, all her life forms, and especially to the next generations coming up behind me.
Because honestly, my heart breaks when I think about what so many young people are inheriting — not in the state of the world, but in the stories they’re told about it. Stories that say, “It’s all shit.” That the damage is too great. That there’s nothing left to save.
“It’s all shit” is just not the whole story. So… I want to keep amplifying better stories… Ones that honor the beauty and the awe. Ones that awaken possibility. Ones that help us remember what’s here to love, protect, and repair. Ones that nourish our souls, that connect us to a bigger picture, a longer arc… We need better stories, dammit!
I have refused to live
locked in the orderly house of
reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in
is wider than that. And anyway,
what’s wrong with Maybe?
You wouldn’t believe what once or
twice I have seen. I’ll just
tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you
ever, possibly, see one.
-Mary Oliver