“If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity.”
(Cicero, 106 – 43 BC)

The quote above is over 2000 years old, long before the human mind could possibly imagine our world of constant, streaming images and messages. This makes the quote even more applicable today than back in the 1st century BC.

I’ve spent three of the past five weeks working in foreign countries and vastly different time zones, and I simply have not been caught up on all the latest news in my native English. While my body is exhausted, and I’ve missed my family, I have actually loved this absence of daily news (and my life has not somehow cratered without it).

The news needs our eyeballs, and nothing holds our attention like terrible news. It’s a simple formula, really.

What if, this weekend, you tried a news fast? No TV, no news apps, and no social media? What if, for just Saturday and Sunday, you effectively turned your phone into a flip-phone, and protected your eyeballs and ears from negative news the way we protect our hands and mouths from germs?

I bet you’ll feel better.

Peace begins with pause,