You Aren't Meant to Carry the World

What is Wit & Wisdom with Tom Greene?

Insightful and open-minded pieces conversations that help you see the world with greater clarity. The bi-weekly roadmap to a more intentional and fulfilling life.

Tom Greene: 00:01

Thanks for tuning in to Wit and Wisdom with Tom Green, where we start conversations on the things that really matter. This is episode number 166 of the Wit and Wisdom Podcast. We're glad you're here. If you enjoy this podcast, please feel free to share it with a few people you care about. We're always looking to make new friends.

Tom Greene: 00:23

Okay. Don't take this the wrong way, but you and I need to have a talk. The kind where we both sit down and turn off our phones and focus for a few minutes. It's gonna be a pretty hard conversation, so don't get mad. Alright.

Tom Greene: 00:40

Let me just put it out on the table. I can tell that you're struggling with everything going on in the world right now. You seem overwhelmed, frustrated, and angry. And I wanna talk through some of this with you and see if I can help you put things in the proper perspective. So I'm guessing it's the daily news that's weighing you down.

Tom Greene: 01:01

It gets me too. We're being force fed the entire world these days in real time and often with a bias in one direction or another. Your nervous system was not built for this. Mine wasn't either. See, you and I aren't meant to carry the world on our shoulders.

Tom Greene: 01:24

It's not weakness. It's just biology. We evolved to track threats in our immediate environment. We didn't evolve from the garden to process a live feed of every atrocity, scandal, outrage, and catastrophe happening to 8,000,000,000 people simultaneously. And yet, here we are, pretending this is normal.

Tom Greene: 01:44

As my dad used to say, never wrestle with the pig. You get dirty, and the pig enjoys it. So two hundred years ago, nobody really cared what was happening on the other side of the country or frankly, on the other side of the world. And it wasn't because they were heartless, it was because they were human. Their bandwidths were taken up by things like keeping their kids healthy, making sure the crops didn't die, and hoping that the livestock didn't freeze to death in winter.

Tom Greene: 02:20

If there was a war, the news might reach you, but it will be months later. No embedded journalists, no live feed of explosions and ultra high def on a 55 inch screen, no talking heads screaming at each other in prime time. By the way, when did watching people scream at each other in prime time about politics become entertainment? Somewhere along the way, civil discourse mutated into professional pig wrestling. Conflict became content.

Tom Greene: 02:55

And we didn't just tolerate it, we actually rewarded it with clicks and shares and hours of our lives will never get back. See, newspapers back then were local and they were weekly. And they told you what you needed to know to function in your own community for that week. Today, our news is global and it's constant. It's less about informing you and more about keeping you emotionally jacked up because fear and anger are sticky.

Tom Greene: 03:26

They hijack your attention and refuse to let it go. See fear and outrage keep you tuning in. They keep you clapping like one of those symbol banging monkeys. And that emotion keeps you watching drug commercials for Ozempic and Jardiance, whatever that is. You aren't being informed anymore.

Tom Greene: 03:47

Frankly, you're being suckered. Because that's the business model. It's not enlightenment. It's not education. It's not wisdom.

Tom Greene: 03:58

It's just engagement. And the easiest way to get engagement is to make you feel like something terrible is happening and you'd be irresponsible to look away. I can see that you and my other readers are carrying a a low level of anxiety. Like, maybe you had one too many Starbucks coffees. Like, something bad is happening, and somehow you feel like it's your responsibility to carry it for the world.

Tom Greene: 04:26

But every one of the world's problems isn't yours to solve. If you pay attention to the arc of your life, you've dealt with some really tough stuff. Going all the way back to high school. Stuff that at the time, you couldn't possibly see how it could work out. And yet it did.

Tom Greene: 04:48

You know, when you think about it, we've both survived the unsurvivable many times. In fact, everything has always worked out. Maybe not perfectly or painlessly or the way we wanted it, but you're still here at the table and so am I. The earth has been forming, freezing, and regenerating for millions of years. Countless civilizations have come and gone, and our graveyards are filled with people who once walked the exact same path as you, with the same cares as you.

Tom Greene: 05:21

Here for an instant, gone in a flash, like a blink of lightning in a summer sky. That's why a rational person would cultivate indifference to things outside of their control, because life is short. That word indifference gets a bad rap. People confuse it with cruelty or apathy. It's neither.

Tom Greene: 05:45

It's actually discernment. It's knowing where your influence ends and refusing to pretend otherwise. See, it's okay to be indifferent. When you're in hospice with six days left, you aren't gonna care about this stuff. And yet, you're spending your finite energy and time focused on things you can't control.

Tom Greene: 06:07

Absorbing stress about situations that won't be solved in your lifetime or maybe even ever. Like the old man yelling at the clouds. Can you see how pointless all this is? At best, you may get eighty or ninety years on this planet if things go well. More if you're mean or stubborn.

Tom Greene: 06:29

But every generation thinks their crisis is unprecedented. And every generation is dead wrong. History is just a graveyard of this time it's different, and it never is. There are events consuming your emotional energy today, events that are algorithmically engineered to hold your attention. And the worst part is you're smart and you already know this.

Tom Greene: 06:59

That's the cruel twist. This isn't ignorance. It's participation against your better judgment. You know that we'll be long gone before the final chapter of any of these issues is written. So why are you living as if it's your job to supervise the universe?

Tom Greene: 07:17

It's not your job to be the world's mall cop. Like when you left that horrible job where nobody appreciated your work. You knew the whole place would fall apart after you left. But guess what? It didn't.

Tom Greene: 07:34

Three days later, someone else picked up right where you left off. Similarly, the world got along just fine before you arrived. And it will continue just fine long after you wake up on the wrong side of the grass. That realization is both humbling and liberating. See, you assume that your constant vigilance matters, and sometimes I feel that way too.

Tom Greene: 08:02

That it somehow makes you a better citizen of the world. That you care when nobody else does. That if you stop paying attention, something will fall apart or the bad guys will win. The problem is you and I are both shadowboxing with a ghost. There's a reason why the world feels like it's always on the brink today because that's the product being sold.

Tom Greene: 08:29

Meanwhile, you're wasting what's left of your limited time remaining on earth. And most of what will affect your life is happening a whole lot closer to home than you think. Your health, your habits, your relationships, your sense of purpose, and how you spend your days. If the weight of the world's getting heavy, maybe you should just set it down, step back, and breathe for a minute. And then maybe say, this is not mine to carry.

Tom Greene: 09:03

It doesn't make you apathetic, it makes you smart. If you really sit with it, you'll see that your life has a way of unfolding exactly as it needs to, even when it doesn't make sense in the moment. The job you didn't get led to something better. The relationship that ended made room for one that fit. The thing that you feared never came, or if it did, you survived it just fine.

Tom Greene: 09:33

You're only here for a blink. Maybe you should spend that time you have remaining living in peace. Or not. It's up to you. Either way, I'm glad we had this little talk.

Tom Greene: 09:48

I feel better. I hope you do too. Wit and Wisdom is a free weekly podcast for people who are curious about the world. If you learned something today or if this podcast challenged you or it made you think differently about the world, how about sharing it with a few people you care about? Maybe you too can have your own honest conversation about the things that really matter.

Tom Greene: 10:14

So thanks again for tuning in. I hope you'll come back next week for another episode of Wit and Wisdom. And in the meantime, always remember, nothing beats nice.