I was in cardiac rehab and I looked over at Helen, an older woman recovering from her third heart attack, and I could see that her eyes had teared up, she looked so sad. It was as if the life had drained from her.

I went over to her and asked her if she was all right, and she said she had turned on the news and seen an awful story about the beheading of a young man in the Middle East,  and other murders and awful things, and then she saw that our leaders were fighting again, threatening and arguing with one another.

“I couldn’t watch it,” she said, “I had to turn if off. Don’t they know how hard it is for us to live like that, watching that all the time, don’t they know how awful it is to live when we have to see that every day? I felt sick. ”

But she saw enough, hours later, she was still so upset about it. The people who make the news and the people who claim to lead us do not know how painful it is for us to experience them and their world sometimes. Nor do they seem to emerge from their own cocoons to care. It is, I think, one of the spiritual challenges of our times, of any time. Do we face the world and try to understand it, do we hide from the world and turn away from the images we are told are the news?

Historians say the world is not, in fact, at its worst, it is much better in so many ways than it has ever been and worse in others. We do not see the good and uplifting things of the world on the news, they are neither profitable or popular. Spirituality has been driven to the edges of consciousness by the people who run media, who lead the country, who found corporations and a system of money and life that is built on fear and anger and projected need. You will never see anyone speaking on a cable news network who has much that is good to say about the world or who is urging us to pay less attention to money and greed and more to feeling centered, hopeful, and compassionate.

I think this is one of the reasons we love animals so much, they permit us to be compassionate, to love purely and be loved purely. They do not horrify us, convince us that horror and suffering are what we need, that life is so complex and expensive that we must enslave ourselves to live it well.

I am thinking of that young man, and the many other people on the earth who suffer and die and who prosper and love and who fail and succeed. I know where I am. I will never accept their news – it will never be my news.

I asked Helen about her new grandchild, and her tears melted away, and a wide smile came to her face, and she simple came alive, returned to herself, was grounded and at peace. She talked for five minutes about her granddaughter, how smart she was, how cute, how much she loved her. The color and life returned to her,  her spirit re-emerged.

Their news is soul-killing, I said, they do it for money, because hatred and fear and anger draw people from their darkest and most vulnerable places and the small triumphs and miracles and wonders of life do not.

This, I said, is your news, perhaps you might watch yours and not theirs in the morning.