Living in WoW

Christopher Suleske

Where do you live? I think most of us live in WoW.

Not WoW as in an exclamation befitting a state of reverence -- for the gift of life, our manifold blessings, etc. Rather, I think most of us live in WoW, as in a World of Worry.

I started my day this past Saturday, recovering from a particularly bad cold, by reading Charles Krauthammer's recent piece on the "Avian" and "1918 pandemic" influenza strains. It is a serious piece, written by a serious man, with serious credentials (he is a medical doctor and psychiatrist in addition to being a level-headed analyst of things political). It is also a scary piece, connecting some dots that, living previously in bliss it would appear, I rather wish had been left unconnected. As I coughed up the previous night's phlegm, I thought of the joking aside I'd been repeating after particularly brutal coughing episodes at home and work: "Dang avain flu!"

Reading Krauthammer's piece surprisingly did not instill in me the grand desire to get cracking on the various honey-dos I'd promised my honey I'd do. Why? I had succumbed to that low-level angst that is living in the World of Worry.

As I drank my Kona Hazelnut coffee and read a few more recent and salient articles, I happened across one by Rich Tucker entitled "Now the bad news". While it didn't undo everything that Krauthammer's piece did to me -- it couldn't, as there was so much actual truth to that piece -- it did remind me that the vast majority of what gets afforded the same level of seriousness as Krauthammer's piece is absolutely unworthy of that seriousness. One of the hardest personal traits to develop is a granularity of interpretation that allows sensing more than the starkest of contrasts. The news media reinforce this by enhancing the contrast through oversimplification and hyperbole. Says Tucker, in commenting on one talking head's reflection on media coverage of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath:

“And you have to wonder, maybe we [the media] make it worse in some respects,” anchor Miles O’Brien added. There’s no need for the “maybe.”

There are serious stories - Krauthammer's piece is one of them. There will be more, though much less frequent than the news media would have you think.

Such is why it's important to step back from time to time - even (especially?) for us social/political/historical/economics/current events junkies - and just tend to our honey-dos.