Searching for Sanity

 

Searching for Sanity in a World That Won’t Stop Yelling

Some days it feels like the world is fraying at the edges. Not because of one headline or one politician or one scandal, but because the internet has turned every moment into a siren. Every outrage is breaking news. Every rumor is a crisis. Every opinion is an emergency. And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, I find myself wondering: Is everything actually getting worse, or am I just seeing more of it than ever before?

It’s a fair question. And honestly, it’s one I’ve been debating with myself. I taught high school history.

If you look back at American history with clear eyes, you'll see that corruption and dysfunction aren’t new. We’ve had eras when bribery was practically a job requirement, when political machines openly sold influence, when scandals toppled presidencies, when institutions bent until they nearly snapped. The country has survived darker chapters than the one we’re living in.

But here’s the difference: back then, most people didn’t have a front‑row seat to every misstep. They didn’t carry a device that delivered a constant drip of outrage directly into their nervous system. They didn’t have algorithms designed to amplify the loudest, angriest voices. They didn’t have a thousand low‑quality sources competing to be the first to scare them. Today, we do.

And that changes everything.

The internet hasn’t just made information accessible; it’s made it inescapable. It’s turned every problem into a crisis and every crisis into a catastrophe. It’s made it feel like the country is collapsing in real time, even when the truth is more complicated, more nuanced, and often less dramatic than the headlines suggest.

So where does that leave someone who’s just trying to stay sane?

I try to remind myself that visibility is not the same thing as decay. Just because I can see every crack doesn’t mean the whole structure is falling apart. Sometimes it just means the lights are brighter.

And there’s something oddly hopeful in that, I think.

Because if the noise is what’s overwhelming us, then the solution isn’t to despair, it’s to turn down the volume. To step back. To remember that the loudest voices are rarely the smartest. To recognize that most people, most institutions, and most parts of this country are still functioning, still striving, still trying.

The internet screams. Reality is quieter.

And in that quiet, there’s room for perspective. There’s room for patience. There’s room for the kind of slow, steady progress that never trends on social media but still shapes the world.

I’m not pretending everything is fine. It isn’t. But everything isn’t falling apart, either. Sometimes the hardest part of staying sane is remembering that both of those things can be true at the same time.

And maybe — just maybe — that’s enough hope to keep going.

Be a blessing to somebody. -- wcd