By MARY KAY RAUMA
This summer I tried to take a break from network news. I was mostly successful, choosing to read the news with my filter on, not missing flashy edit jobs and graphic images. Then it was back to school day (back to reality day for some of us), and I decided to buck up and turn on the six o’clock news.
There was Brian Williams sporting his summer tan and looking otherwise unchanged from when I turned him off last June. As I chopped vegetables for dinner, half-listening, I marveled at the resilience of these people who deliver the news,“talking heads” with bullet-proof smiles. Then I heard Brian say something that stopped me in my tracks. They cut to a commercial and I waited, thinking I must have been mistaken. “Did I just see a crack in the veneer?”And, he said it again.
In high school I got this idea in my head that I wanted to be a TV anchorwoman. Fortunately my friend’s father, the head of Seattle’s NBC affiliate, gave me some advice.
“Get a liberal arts degree,” he said. “We can teach you what you’d learn in communications school at the station, but we can’t teach you how to think critically and write.”
I took heed, got two degrees in English and spent the next five years discovering the underbelly of network news — namely that sensational news brings in high ratings, high ratings sell ads, and all the “suits” care about is selling ads. I turned and ran.
Watching the news these days is surreally depressing, like a disturbing morphing of the movie “A Clockwork Orange” and a Ray Bradbury novel. On the aforementioned broadcast, they flashed a world map with “hot spot” countries highlighted in red; the world looked like a green and red quilt. The same newscast brought us more of what has become standard fare: plague viruses, filmed beheadings of innocents, senseless murders, fights over reclining airplane seats, fires, floods and on and on. And then tragedy hit close to home with the loss of a vibrant member of our community.
“It seems like the world is falling apart,” Williams said.
What do we do? How do we process all of this?
Nearly every time I hung out with my dad this summer, he turned on Leonard Cohen full bore; specifically, one song, “Anthem.” He’d belt out the last stanza with Cohen’s prosaic delivery, “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Sometimes it’s really tough to look beyond the cracks and see the light. But it’s there for each of us. We find it in walking, riding horses, volunteering, painting pictures, writing poetry, watching birds, praying, playing music, doing yoga, reading a book, working, meditating, talking to a friend, cooking a meal. We’re fortunate to live in a place conducive to all of this with room to breath, natural beauty, caring people.
It’s funny how when you go to your “light” place, it becomes contagious. Passed on through the beauty you’ve created, the help you’ve provided or the smile and greeting you’ve shared with a stranger. Little shimmers of light everywhere collectively lighting up the world.
There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
Crack or light? I choose the light.
— Mary Kay Rauma is the principal of Rauma Associates. She can be reached at marykay@raumaassociates.com
