Information Trauma

Trauma is any­thing that hap­pens to you too fast. Pos­i­tively, it a ride at Six Flags. Neg­a­tively, it is a car wreck. Trauma has to do with try­ing to digest an over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence. It is like try­ing to get a drink of water from a fire hose. Given the cir­cum­stances, you are sup­posed to drink all of it. It can­not be done, so the mind has a mis­er­able sys­tem, called Post Trau­matic Stress Dis­or­der, that it uses to return to the trau­matic expe­ri­ence and take one sip at a time until it is all inte­grated into the sys­tem. Some­times it takes a life­time.
A lesser ver­sion of that hap­pens every sin­gle day: Infor­ma­tion Trauma. This is an infor­ma­tion cul­ture. Prices of fuel can change sev­eral times per day. The ver­biage in com­mer­cials speeds up to get in the max­i­mum num­ber of words in a very brief time­frame. You have to catch it with the right side of the brain (holis­tic), because it is way too fast for the left side (ver­bal). In other words, our infor­ma­tion hits us like a speed­ing truck. It is an ocean of lit­tle rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion attached to an almost infi­nite vari­ety of expres­sions. You can­not drink the whole ocean of infor­ma­tion flow nor the sub­se­quent (tedious to the point of insane) analy­sis. So you have to make some choices.
Am I going to go through life dazed by infor­ma­tion trauma, or am I going to be selec­tive and dis­cern­ing? Am I a walk­ing play­back recorder or a thinker? Do I have the fore­sight to stand back from the tsunami of the infor­ma­tion age and think my own thoughts? Can I with­stand the stigma of being out­side of the com­mon exchanges of irrel­e­vant data that passes for con­ver­sa­tion?  Is is pos­si­ble to live like a peace­ful monk right in the mid­dle of the infor­ma­tion storm? What exactly do I need to know to truly live?
It always gets down to a spir­i­tual per­spec­tive. The Spirit is the ulti­mate guide. You will have to take the time to get still enough to lis­ten. By so doing you will be able to know what is needed and what is to be ignored. The Spirit also gives you the power not to have to second-guess your­self. You can enter into your actions with con­fi­dence and com­plete your tasks with no regret. Jesus took the time to do this. If it worked for him…