There are times when the elephant in the room is just too big to completely ignore. This is one of those times. I lost a whole work day on Wednesday, January 6, because I had streaming video on for twelve straight hours, in between reading live news updates as they were posted. Believe me, that's extremely unusual for me. I don't watch TV and I don't usually watch video clips for more than twenty minutes. I'm a reader. I read about six newspapers regularly plus magazines (print and digital). But on Wednesday I couldn't turn the live video off. I was completely gripped by FOMS (Fear Of Missing Something). I ended up working a crossword puzzle and watching the sausage getting made--er, watching the Congressional proceedings, for several hours until 12:30 a.m. when I was so exhausted, I just had to stop and go to bed. Even the Washington Post's commentators had signed off by then.

Maybe you were doing the same, although a lot of my Facebook friends were saying they'd turned the video off after an hour or so because they couldn't bear to watch it. I have lots of thoughts about what happened, but I'm not going to talk about them here. I know every one of you has your own thoughts, and we're all being barraged from every side with other people's thoughts about Wednesday's events. Not all emotional reactions should be vented without some digestion, or at least that's my view. Which isn't to say that I'm not spamming my friends' Facebook posts with drive-by comments, as one does.

But when things like this happen, it's always useful to look around calmly and ask ourselves, "how does this really affect me? How does this affect Winchendon?" The answer usually is...not very much.

Change which is both profound and sudden is quite rare. We got hit with such a change this March when the Governor shut down the schools and non-essential businesses in one fell swoop in an attempt to contain COVID-19. That was a huge shock, one which is still reverberating, because the pandemic is still going on. We've shut down for ice storms, hurricanes and blizzards but that's not at all the same thing. We know those are coming, we know what to expect if the worst happens, and we can make preparations. Above all, we know that when the storms pass and the power lines are repaired, things will go back to normal. But the pandemic shut-down was unforeseen, abrupt and indefinite. The last time something like that happened, it was right after 9/11 in 2001.

Because these changes are so disruptive, they're traumatizing. They make us fearful of losing control to powerful forces out of nowhere. They put us on the defensive, feeling that we have to be ready to defend ourselves and/or fend for ourselves--even though those feelings are both unrealistic and counter-productive. We only survive extreme events by cooperating and helping each other, not by sitting on our hoarded survival gear waving guns. Fortunately, most people get that when the events actually happen.

I'm sure that the pandemic has a lot to do with the raving paranoia so many people are suffering from these days. Utterly ridiculous notions, like the idea that busloads of Black protesters would arrive in Winchendon to wreck the town during the BLM rally at GAR park in June, wouldn't seem so plausible to people who weren't in the middle of a mandated economic shutdown.

When it comes to political changes--changes in government, changes in laws--those opposing them love to stretch hyperbole to the breaking point. If this candidate is elected and not that one, it will be "the end of American democracy" or we'll wake up the next day in a Fascist dictatorship or a 1984-style dystopia, or millions of people will die, or our cities will all be burned down, or, of course, "they" will take away all our guns! (No one ever worries about "they" taking away our cars, which is actually a lot more likely. Did you know it will be impossible to buy a new car that isn't electric in Massachusetts after 2035?)

But none of this is going to happen because the United States population is simply too huge, too cantankerous and too uncooperative. Our juggernaut just lumbers along, veering a teeny bit left, a teeny bit right, slowly crawling ahead. If we hit an iceberg, the iceberg is in trouble. American culture, language, media, corporations and customs are found in every other country in the world. And here in small towns like Winchendon, life changes even less. Our biggest concern should be the outsiders who are buying up Winchendon's real estate, not protesters or social change.

Which is the trouble with watching life on TV--indeed, with with watching TV at all. As a Photoshop wizard who knows how to make hyper-realistic 3D "deep fake" video (the software to do it is free!), I know better than to believe anything I see on the Internet. I know all Internet memes are trash. I know how to use Google Image Search to find the original sources for edited and faked images. It's easy. But many people would rather have their fears and prejudices validated than take a few minutes to check their facts.

After my binge on Wednesday, I'm rinsing my brain off under some nice cold well water and I'm not watching any more video for a while, and I'm taking my reading with the pound or two of salt I generally do. And thinking. A lot. It's a way of dealing with upsetting events that I highly recommend. If you're feeling stressed out, turn off the TV (or the streaming video, or your cell phone), go outside, look around your town, and ask yourself, "so what's different, here in my town, right now?"

You'll feel a lot better. I guarantee it.

Inanna Arthen