Today for the first time in three months, I took a long walk.

I walked downtown, to go get some meat for the Purim Seuda next week.

And in the process, I thought I’d actually make a day of it, because the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, for the first time in three months I didn’t have a bunch of urgent stuff to take care of – and I realised how much I’ve missed just walking around in a happy state of mind.

I have no idea what the current ‘news’ is – and at this stage, I don’t really care.

I am realising more and more, how much time, energy and ‘soul power’ has been sucked out of all of us with the never-ending cycle of speculation and ‘anxiety inducing’ prophecies, of all stripes.

I will deal with a problem, God forbid, once it’s a real problem, and I am trying my best to not get sucked into any more speculation about ‘what will be’.

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This is freeing my focus and energy up so much.

I am doing so much stuff ‘offline’ these days – and I much prefer it that way.

I’m still researching, of course. Still writing. Still learning, still growing, still trying to work on my billions of bad middot. But as much ‘offline’ as I can.

So the research is increasingly happening in the library, with real books.

(BTW – that’s a good thing also for the research’s own sake, the amount of bogus information, or disinformation, or ‘non-information’ online is staggering.)

The writing is happening also more offline, and then I just spend half an hour ‘online’ to upload stuff for the blog.

But the last few weeks, I am feeling such a need to be less with the internet, and way more in ‘real life’.

And a huge part of that is breaking the addiction to ‘news’.

Last week, someone told me a cyclone was meant to hit Israel.

Of course, that didn’t happen.

I could tell a trillion more bad news stories that haven’t happened, all brought to us by the navi sheker that is the modern news cycle.

Yes, times are still challenging.

Money is tight – I am hearing that from a lot of family in chul at the mo, that prices are going through the roof there too, and there is no ‘war’ to blame that on.

There’s a lot of uncertainty, people worrying about nukes, Ukraine, Trump Towers, global warming, measles epidemics.

Whatever.

Life has always been like this.

That’s why Rabbenu told the guy who was so busy working to stop for a moment and go and look at the sky.

In 70 years, all this will be different, Rabbenu told him, as he looked at the marketplace in some town in the Ukraine.

If that was true 200+ years ago, it’s for sure true in our days too.

Things are always changing, always in a state of flux, and human beings find that unsettling.

But our world is temporary, a corridor, and God is just reminding us that nothing we see down here, materially, is really ‘real’, when compared to the spiritual aspect of life.

Everything that is happening here is just to get us all to develop a more honest and satisfying relationship with God, and to encourage us to work on our own bad middot.

That’s it.

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So, war or no war.

Drought or no drought.

Peace or no peace.