Stop Monitoring, Start Building

Checked out on the current thing, creating the most important things

Over the past several months I keep coming back to this quote from C.S. Lewis: “It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning.”

It may be one of the most relevant things ever written about modern life. I have barely scratched the surface on Lewis’ work, but the more I see from him, the more I can tell that he is one of the more prescient and wise authors of the past century.

I wonder what Lewis would say today about our addictions to social media, 24-hour news cycles, the constant outrage and state of worry that most people find themselves in now that every conflict, scandal, and crisis is in your face around the clock.

Right now the Middle East conflict is dominating every media outlet. Legacy, alternative, socials, all of it. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know much about what’s going on there. I don’t think many people do. And quite frankly, I don’t care to. Because at the end of the day, it’s not something I can have any impact on. And it’s a conflict we shouldn’t be involved in at all.

Maybe that sounds dismissive. But it’s a deliberate choice I have to make about where to focus my time and energy.

The Hopelessness Trap

If you spend enough time “monitoring the situation” (the meme of a guy obsessively watching global crises unfold on social media while taking no direct action), it’s very easy to be discouraged and feel hopeless about the world around you.

The corruption alone is staggering. Just look at what has come out of the Epstein files. I personally was not shocked, but it can be discouraging to see how many political leaders and influential figures are compromised. And that’s just the surface level stuff we know about. It’s one example of many that paints a picture of how deep the rot goes.

Then there’s the incredibly corrupt financial system. A system that literally steals your time and energy through inflation and then throws egregious taxes on top. Your savings and your earnings are a representation of the time and energy you spent to earn them. That is being structurally devalued by a system of inflation where central banks and governments coordinate to create endless supplies of currency from nothing. It’s backed by nothing. It devalues the savings and labor of ordinary people. The government runs on unsustainable debt and nobody in power has any intention of fixing it. Because fixing it at this point would mean a financial reset of epic proportions, making the 2008 crisis look like child’s play.

This isn’t capitalism. It’s not even close. Capitalism, real capitalism, is probably the fairest system that exists. What we have is something else entirely. A parasitic structure that funnels wealth upward while the cost of living crushes everyone below.

And it doesn’t stop there. There’s violence around the world. Food crises. A cost of living crisis that’s hitting families hard. The list goes on.

If you sit with all of that long enough, hopelessness starts to feel rational. When things are this broken and you have no power to fix them, what’s the point of even trying?

The Illusion of Top-Down Change

A lot of people believed, and most still believe, that we could affect change through the political process. Many of us thought electing Trump would shift things in a meaningful way. And while I’m not here to write a political analysis, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of us are disappointed. His presidency, in many respects, feels no different than most. More government spending, more wars, generally more of the same.

This isn’t unique to one president or one party. The machine is the machine. Whoever sits in the chair inherits a structure that is designed to perpetuate itself. Expecting a single election to reverse decades of institutional decay is, in hindsight, unrealistic.

So if the macro picture is bleak and the political process isn’t delivering, the question becomes: where do you actually have agency?

What C.S. Lewis Understood

Here’s the full Lewis quote that’s been sitting with me:

“It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know). A great many people do now seem think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is.”

Read that last part again. The mere state of being worried is not meritorious. Worrying about things you cannot change is not a virtue. It’s actually the opposite. It’s an escape and distraction from the work you can do, the impact you can make, and the people you can help right in front of you.

That’s the trap most of us find ourselves in. We scroll through the feed or watch the “news” of every global crisis, every major scandal, every corrupt corner of this system and feel like we’re doing something by being aware, by being concerned, by having an opinion on it. But awareness without action isn’t useful. And when the things you’re aware of are completely outside your control, the awareness itself becomes a weight.

So What Can We Do?

I’ve been sitting with this Lewis quote for months now, and what I keep coming back to is the need to focus locally. The agency I have is in my own life, my family, my health, my work, my community. It’s in the decisions I make every day about where to direct my time, energy, and focus to better the immediate world around me.

I can’t fix the financial system. But I can educate myself, protect my purchasing power, and help others understand what’s happening to their money.

I can’t reform the food system or reverse the sickness crisis in this country. But I can choose where to source my food locally. And I can help others connect with local sources too.

I can’t stop a war overseas. But I can bring connection, joy, and peace to the people around me instead of doom-scrolling through the latest developments.

I can’t change what’s happening at the federal level. But I can build something meaningful in my own community.

This is what I keep coming back to. Not whatever the current thing is. Not the situation to monitor. What’s directly in front of me.

Sound Life Philly

This is why I’m building SoundLife Philly.

I’m going to continue publishing every week on this newsletter. But I also feel called now to find my people. People who are thinking about the same things I am. People who care about their health and are skeptical of a system that profits from keeping us sick. People who recognize that the financial system is broken and are looking for solutions. People who are questioning the narratives they’ve been fed, whether it’s about food, money, medicine, or media.

My goal is to build a local community of like-minded individuals and families who are focused on building a sound life. We don’t need to see eye to eye on everything, but I think we’ll share more in common than we think. I want to find the kindred spirits who share the conviction that the way forward is to build, not to wait for someone else to fix things.

In practice, that means a free weekly note covering what’s on my mind about health, money, and life in this area, plus local farms, restaurants, and events worth knowing about. And more importantly, a monthly in-person gathering. Happy hours, farm tours, dinners, whatever brings people together. The first one is happening next month.

If you’re in the greater Philadelphia area, I’d love for you to join. You can get on the list at soundlifephilly.com to receive the weekly note and get details on the gatherings. And if you know someone in the area who might be a fit, please share this with them or connect us directly.

For the rest of you who aren’t local to me, we’ll stay connected right here. I’ll continue publishing weekly. And I’d encourage you to think about what building locally looks like in your own community.

The world is chaotic. It’s uncertain. And it’s far more corrupt than most people realize. But you have more agency than you think. It’s just not where most people are looking. It’s not overseas and it’s not in DC. It’s in our backyards.

Lewis finished that passage by saying he thinks we’re meant to enjoy our friends, our food, our sleep, and the frosty sunrise. I think he’s right.

The world will do what it does. Focus on what’s in front of you. Build the life you want to live. Find the people who are doing the same.

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