The nature of news is such that there is always more good news
than bad. The threshold for good events to qualify as news is much higher than
for bad events. And, most good news is of the form of individuals or groups
responding to bad news/events with courage. So, bad news is an inherent feature
of good news.
In order to not spent most of our days convulsed with anger
or despair, it is important to create some buffers between us and news. For
instance, I woke up this morning and checked the newsfeed on my phone to learn
of the custodial death of two Muslims in Bihar. They had been tortured in the
most gruesome manner. Not news you want to wake up to. So, I promptly deleted
the news app as well as Google Chrome and YouTube for good measure, so that if
I was tempted to check the news, I would have to go through the cumbersome
process of reinstalling those apps. Sometimes, the best way to resist
temptation is to make it logistically difficult to succumb to it. I have long maintained
that diet discipline must be exercised in the supermarket not at home. Once a
foodstuff is in the house, it will be consumed. If it is very unhealthy, one is
tempted to consume it for no better reason than to keep it away from family.
I have also set a timer for Twitter on my laptop, which limits
the time I spend on it to one hour per day. So far, I have only cheated once,
when tensions between India and Pakistan threatened to boil over into a
full-blown war. I wouldn’t even dream of installing Twitter on my phone.
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