If you accidentally make coffee without a filter, you’ll know it. It doesn’t become coffee, really. The water pours like rain through the grounds, unable to steep the coffee and have time to extract all its goodness. The pot fills with hot water and the grounds swirl around like silt at the bottom of a lake.
The filter is essential to the process so that the coffee is made slowly. Plus it removes the unnecessary bits, and percolates them until it has time to extract what we hoped to capture.
I feel like I lived my life without a filter for too long. Every morning, I willingly opened the news, I scrolled Facebook, then I switched to Instagram. I’d even listen to a YouTube video on my way to work and on my way home too. And that cycle repeated throughout the day. Strangers berate each other in the comments. News titles made irresistible to read of your doom. Election year inspired extra division. Information in the echo chamber.. I became deeply invested in what was being said. And between the ups and downs of polling, the small world of social media shows images I can’t unsee from the war in Gaza of innocent babies and grieving humans and war. Feeling helpless and scared and sad and anxious deep in my tissues and jaw.
That pot of coffee made without a filter is just murky and meaningless. Grounds suspend and sink and swirl around in upswells of hot water.
It’s important to stay informed. In fact, I’m of the belief it’s privileged not to. But in this age, it must be done thoughtfully. We live in 24 hour news cycles, the bombardment of information, and opinions. None of the information we receive can really be examined and processed and reduced to meaning.
I deleted the news and social media off of my phone just after the election result, and at first my mind felt like a flurried backlog of emotions and thoughts and fears. I couldn’t get a handle on any of it. I cried non-stop. Life felt meaningless as I tried to sort through all this information I’ve been collecting. Trying desperately to find some peace.
A friend calls me and asks if I’ve heard the latest news. The day’s information still finds me — but is able to percolate.
gummygunk
areudirty
romaincrisis
pixelskylines
dailybridgerton
stormborns
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
