The Real Reason Behind Why We Hate Reading The News

It doesn’t make you happy. It’s as simple as that.

There are no joyous feelings whatsoever associated with reading the inevitable spread of diseases, mass killings, cultural difference, and political shenanigans. It doesn’t involve the musings of the heart but is in dire need of mental strength so strong that it leaves your eyebrows in full focus that they don’t separate.

What will leave you awake at two in the morning is not the mystery of the moon nor the charm behind the twinkling dusk. It is that inkling fear that at any point World War III may commence or that one tourist from Africa who brought a box-full of authentic coffee and a contagion of the Ebola virus visits your hometown. You realize that a good night’s sleep is a luxury you can’t afford.

Aristotle once quoted “Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life; the whole aim and end of human existence.”

When you think of it, this could be the motto of the entire human species. One lives to solely pursue self-satisfaction. Let me illustrate.

At a breakfast diner an old woman in a trench coat sips her cup o’ joe and swallows slowly. You notice her eyes lit up a little as she gulps her daily dose of caffeine and licks a little bit off it from her lips. She sets it down and breathes slowly. Obviously satisfied, obviously happy. She turns to her vintage bag and takes out rolled pieces of paper and flaps it out like it was a blanket on a picnic. But this was no picnic. This was her daily dose of migraine. This was the newspaper. She pushes the caffeine aside and starts turning her head from left to right like an old typewriter. Her smile turns to a frown; her eyes almost squeezed shut out of concentration. If only newspapers could talk, she thought. Maybe it would sing endless songs of emergency sirens, bombs and gun shots, protests, crying mothers, and whistling storms. She’d had enough, the old lady thought. Even if she knew she hadn’t even scratched the surface yet. She closes her eyes and breathes slowly, looking at the window to her side. Obviously overwhelmed, obviously unhappy.

Indeed as humans we thirst to be happy. We yearn for a utopian world where we slide over rainbows and swim in seas of dark chocolate. But the world isn’t perfect. It is political, economic, cultural, natural, and religious. The deconstruction of the real and fictional world is hard to define especially when we are ignorant of the things around us.

Man is at fault because he thinks he is the center of the world that as long as he’s okay then the world is okay. But it’s not. Therefore he’s not.

If you want to be happy, then help the world be happy as well. One does not live for himself alone. Everybody affects everybody regardless of class and race. Only a few know of that. The least you could do is pick up that newspaper, have a good cup o’ joe or go on bbc.com and read. Like the old lady, look out that window and be human enough to care.

It will make you happy. It’s as simple as that.