Before we\u2019ve seen something for ourselves we have this\npicture in our mind of what something will be like. Most of the time that\npicture comes from things we\u2019ve heard and seen in the media. Whether we\u2019ve seen things on the news or in\nthe movies or whether we\u2019ve read things on social media, when we haven\u2019t seen\nsomething firsthand it\u2019s what\u2019s been portrayed that forms a picture in our\nminds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The older I get the more I have come to recognize the danger\nthat comes from letting the media form our view of things, especially when we\nare living in a day where networks are broadcasting news 24 hours a day when\nquite frankly there isn\u2019t twenty-four hours of newsworthy stories happening. The\nresult is a need to manufacture a sense of stories being newsworthy by\ndramatizing them and sensationalizing them in order to get viewers to tune in.\nMole hills get made into mountains because frankly mountains are far more\ninteresting to hear about. No one can\njust be frustrated about something because painting them as hateful is far more\ncompelling to listen to. The more polarizing a social media post is the more\nviral it becomes. Leaders are pitted against leaders, countries are pitted\nagainst countries, and people end up forming biases against people they don\u2019t\neven know\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll admit that before I traveled to Russia last week I was really\nnervous about what the people would be like because of the things I\u2019d heard in the\nmedia over the years, but I cannot adequately express how differently I feel\nabout the people of Russia after having been there for myself and gotten to\nknow some of them firsthand. The people I met were kind and warm and lovely and\nI had an amazing time getting to know them on my visit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By that same token, when I turned on the news being played in Russia and heard some of the things being portrayed about Americans that were not an accurate description of what I know about American people form my own firsthand experience I thought to myself – no wonder people have such nervousness about one another when their entire view of one another is coming from what they\u2019ve heard in the media.\u00a0 I\u2019d been nervous because of things I\u2019d heard about Russians and I\u2019m sure people in Russia have been nervous because of things they\u2019ve heard about America, when the reality is that people in both countries are AWESOME!\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It made me wish everyone could have the opportunity to get\nto know one another firsthand because the reality is that people all over the\nworld are awesome and we all have so much in common – We all care about our\nfamilies. We all have a reverence for what our ancestors went through. We all\nhave respect for the history of our homelands. We all want to love and be\nloved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think it\u2019s unrealistic to think we\u2019re going to be able to change\nthe way the media dramatizes things, but what we CAN change is not allowing what\nwe hear in media to form our views of people. As we hear things we can remember\nthat ulterior motives could be driving the way many things get portrayed to us\nso we can recognize that and take it with a grain of salt. And we can choose\nnot to judge people until we\u2019ve gotten to know them firsthand. If we all do\nthat our world will be a much nicer place and we will discover that its full of\nfar more friends than we ever imagined we could have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have a beautiful day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n