Does anyone here or out there feel tired and heavy? And when I say tired, I mean downcast, to the point of being dejected. If the answer is yes, you’re not alone.

We’ve all been there. And while the reasons may vary for each individual, the gist is the same. Sometimes, things weigh us down.

Let’s touch a bit on the external reasons that cause us anxiety because some of the stuff that’s causing us grief might be because of our own doing. Maybe the reason behind this wretched feeling is what we’ve been consuming! As the saying goes, ‘you are what you eat.’ What we take in affects us, and while that would take us to the topic of diet and health, what I’m driving at is figurative consumption. What have we been feeding our minds?

I am guilty of consuming too much social media. I continuously scroll through bad news, negative posts, or distressing information to the point of feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed. It’s textbook doomscrolling. Mostly politics. And man, we all know what a freakin’ sh*t show that is wherever you are in the world whether you’re in the U.S. of A., or good ‘ol ‘Pinas.

See if you recognize yourself here: You watch a news bit. It bothers you. You switch to YouTube and see your go-to channel’s take on the topic. Usually, you have already pre-agreed with this channel’s views, given your own biases. You try another channel anyway, which takes a slightly different approach to the topic, leading you to another issue that has you all keyed up again. You can also go to Instagram Shorts and Threads to discuss a similar topic. Before you know it, you’ve had your eyes, ergo, brain figuratively glued to your device for an hour-and-a-half. And a good part of your precious time has been hijacked by talking heads on your cell phone, which almost always don’t provide you the answer you were looking for, but instead get you all the more agitated.

If that’s the case, stop. Put the device down, close the laptop, or stand up from the desktop, and take a much-needed pause.

The media have always been designed to seize and hold your attention, much more so in the age of smartphones, which ironically have managed to dumb down a significant portion of the world.  There’s a reason for the term ‘captive-audience,’ and no, it’s not just to sell you a freakin’ sneaker, although that’s probably also the reason.

My advice? Log off social media for a day, at least, or maybe more, and find ways to quiet the mind. I try to read a book (which is hard, because my attention span is already compromised) and, of course, play more music. There is still some healing magic in the act of listening to an old record and hearing something familiar that you like and that holds meaning for you. There's a term for this called 'cognitive ease and comfort,' which means your brain doesn’t have to work as hard to process information.  

And some old reliables for me are anything by The Beatles, maybe “Revolver,” “White Album,” and “Abbey Road.” Or any Wilco album. And surprisingly, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There's something about a Jeff Tweedy song, or hearing John Frusciante rip it up on a guitar solo.

The Beatles? 'The love you take is equal to the love you make,' as they say.

And of course, a healthy heaping of Pinoy pop.