July 25, 2025
I’m pleased I have arrived at my age, a happy person. To be sure, I have my disappointments as do you. And some of those disappointments won’t change…too late to change them. But in general terms I’m about as happy as a person can be at this stage of life. Each day is worth living, even as I’m reminded the clock ticks quietly, but without pause, in the background.
I have been giving thought to what I believe are the attributes that contribute to my happiness, because I believe happiness is not achieved by accident. As in any other positive state of mind, it needs to be worked on and nurtured.
I read all kinds of advice about achieving happiness. I find most of them tedious. You know…
”Arise each morning in a positive frame of mind, face the sun, breathe deeply and consider your place in the universe…”
Don’t know about you, but when I get up in the morning, I catalog my aches and do not achieve coherency until I’ve got coffee in me.
“Breathe in and count to three. Release slowly and…”
Some people do this, and it is an undeniable positive if you can do so. I just don’t have the dedication to that routine necessary to succeed at it. And my mind just races all the time. If you can do all of that (thinking morning yoga class), by all means keep on keeping on. Thing about happiness is we each roll our own.
But I think happiness advice needs to offer things you can actually do and stick with. Because happiness is layered on over the years, not a one-shot thing.
So today, here is something I think we can all do that will make us happy, or at the very least, happier or less unhappy.
Minimize cable news, minimize social media consumption. Whether you watch FOX News, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NPR, just let most of it go.
It is not contributing to your happiness. And here’s an example of why.
This year, Michael and I have spent roughly half the year traveling abroad. Ten weeks in Asia and then a Mediterranean cruise and ten days in Paris, our favorite city. In the process, we visited thirteen different countries, I think something around forty cities.
SINGAPORE, THAILAND, VIETNAM, MALAYSIA, TAIWAN, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA, PHILIPPINES, INDONESIA, CHINA, GREECE, ITALY, FRANCE.
What did we find?
Without exception, people were kind, helpful, and pleasant. They were seemingly in a good mood, shopping, filling the restaurants. We made friends with some Canadians on the ship, there was no 51st state animosity. They ‘get it’ when it comes to the President’s comments on that. In Korea people expressed their appreciation for the American contribution to their independence, more than one said they would not be free if it were not for us. The United Nations cemetery was an especially meaningful experience, commemorating the sacrifices in that forgotten war. It was nice.
Throughout our travels, we saw vast crowds of people, too many nationalities to count. On our Silversea Asia cruise we were told the ship’s company totaled 42 different nationalities…all working together as a team.
What was noticeable was the lack of a police presence, everywhere we went. Those vast crowds just didn’t need to be policed…China being an exception, but you understand why the heavy police presence.
So, in sum, we found the world a pleasant and welcoming thing, totally without stress, tension or a pre-occupation with politics. How many times are you fed what I call the Chaos Line in the media…the world going to hell.
Deadly lawmaker ambush in Minnesota raises fears about fake police officers knocking on doors
Fox News
What does this do to anyone’s frame of mind? It just adds to the list of impossibly impossible things to worry about. No wonder people can’t relax. But it sells eyeball counts!
Now it may surprise that although my work centered on managing money for our clients, I simply never watched the media in that regard. CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg being examples of channels I never watched. CNN Money? Amateur hour. I found them lacking good value and so not helpful to my work.
And at home, I long ago turned off the news. But on this trip, we decided to watch CNN from our hotel since we had some down time between end of day and dinner. This is the first time in my memory that I have done that.
Oh gosh, never again. The commentary filled me with anxiety and doubt, when really there should not have been any at all. I have seen FOX from time to time recently (it’s on in the gym at my club), the view they present of the world is greatly at odds with what I actually experience in the real world.
Here’s how. I remember a hurricane came through Naples and since my condo was on the ocean, I got a front row seat…it made landfall a few hundred feet from my beach front. Anyway, the day after it came through, a gas station on the next block was on fire, I believe an electrical short. It was the only real damage I could see for perhaps a mile in any direction. It was the building selected by the media about the hurricane in Florida. So, 99% no problem, they videotaped the <1%. False impression but boring doesn’t sell.
My sum total on all of this is that the media have each identified their base, the customer. And then, they feed them with biased reporting that energizes the base…FOX angering their right-leaning viewers, MSNBC does the same to their left audience. And I believe a constant diet of that, all generated to create and keep viewers in order to sell advertising, plays the viewer in a cynical corporate fashion.
No wonder people are so frustrated and cranky.
So, my suggestion is if you want to be happier and less irritated, frustrated or angry, you tune most of it out. It takes only a few minutes to get the headlines of the day; we don’t have to stew in a deep soup of bias all night long. We have an obligation as citizens to stay informed and engage in debate and most of all, to vote. But that does not mean we need to listen to bias for hours on end until we are angry and mean spirited.
Try it. Try knocking back all of that consumption for a month and see what it does for you. Substitute with a good novel or mystery, binge watch Those Who Are About to Die (gritty Roman empire story…viewer discretion is advised but we enjoyed it).
Me, I’m back to no consumption at all. I go to Real Clear Politics and read opinion from left to right, I do the same on Real Clear Markets to supplement my various research subscriptions. Try www.refdesk.com and go to the drop-down news banner in the upper right and pick your source. I get a balanced view, and then I get on with living the life I want to live, not the life they want me to live.
Because the life they present to me is not a real one, it is a figment, an imaginative exaggeration of the truth all played for corporate profit.
Count me out.
