It’s not only about us

Like most new parents I was exhausted, mentally and physically. My son Jack, three months old, lay in his crib fidgeting and crying on and off. Our pediatrician told us it was important for him to learn how to self-soothe. So, instead of giving him a pacifier or stroking his head to relax, we needed to be hands-off and let him try to put himself to sleep.

It feels cruel in the beginning, one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. Sitting in the dark, doing nothing, listening to someone you love cry for help. It’s a constant struggle between the heart and mind, but after fifteen minutes, I could hear the faint sound of his rhythmic breathing, meaning he had fallen asleep. Jack had successfully self-soothed.

Slowly and quietly I closed his nursery door and went into the living room to decompress with a whiskey and some TV. When I flipped on the tube it was tuned to a cable news network, which was odd because over the past couple of years I’ve tried to watch less and less of that due the incessant firehouse of “news” that’s been shooting out. Mind you, it’s not one network in particular, it’s all of them. But frankly I didn’t have the energy to change it, so there I sat.

Over the next several hours I was unwittingly glued to the screen. It all played out like the remnants of a car crash along the side of the highway. I knew I should look away, but my morbid curiosity kept me fixated. Thoughts flew from the right and left, the recent shooting at a synagogue, the latest movements of the immigrant caravan, people were angry, people were opinionated, all convinced they were correct. I could see the gears spinning in their heads as they readied each new jab and barb.

It quickly became apparent that not a single one was listening to the other, but I was, silently and in horror. Rhetoric and vitriol flowed, tossed into a blender and served up as an ideological smoothie of apathy and fear. That bitter taste in my mouth made me remember why I stopped watching cable news networks in the first place, and so I mustered up the strength to finally turn off the television.

More tired and stressed than when I began, I looked down at the baby monitor to see Jack, peaceful and content, fast asleep. He was still so young, yet to be affected by all of this hate and anger infiltrating our humanity. I wished he could stay that way forever.

Then, in that same moment, I was struck by a thought that made my stomach turn: if things are this bad right now—and they seem to be getting worse—how will Jack’s life look when he’s my age? Thinking back to what the pediatrician had said, I began wondering if there was a way to help all of humanity self-soothe.