The Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge I see in my future, both today and 25 years from now is listening. In order to make a difference, live ethically and encourage hope, I need to listen, globally. There is so much noise in my world (yours I imagine too). Conventional media broadcasts every minute of every day, marketers cram messaging into every cranny of my life, and social media has given all of a platform to raise our voices and lift our ideas. Infotainment, propaganda, journomanipulation, shout for my attention and I often react by shutting out everything, or at least everything that doesn’t confirm what I am already thinking. How do I sort through the morass and discern which magic elixir, remarkable insight or mundane fact is relevant in this moment? How do I decide which conjecture has passed an imagined burden of proof today so that it can be called fact?

I find listening overwhelming in small doses so being inundated with zigabytes every day can become paralyzing. Is it naïve or worse for me to trust that the most relevant and needed will force its way through the crackle? My conclusion is not based in pure research and the evidence for my adoption is likely pure intuition but I have decided I need to ‘trust’ some sources more than others. I need to choose to listen more carefully to my trusted sources and then press my ear to the outside of my world and then compare what others are saying with the conclusions I am drawing.

The solution to all/any of our problems lies in the as yet unimagined so I need to figure out this challenge. What are you doing to overcome the din?

B