news feed – sethlewis.ie

little love-heart likes
like drops of red rain
rain upon my image
imagine the approval—
approval!
in my veins
in vain I try to keep it
it’s gone—the world moves on
on to ever newer stories
stories so sensational
sense is pushed aside
side yourself with someone
one side or the other—
other news is coming up
upward trending—multiplying
lying?
maybe, I can’t tell
tell you what I saw just now
now is moving far too fast
faster still, the flow won’t stop
stop!
or will it take us under?
understand that we will never
never find our fill
filling up on what this feed
feeds us

I recently came across this excerpt from a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to a friend. He wrote it in 1946, before the internet was invented, before the dawn of push notifications and instant news updates without pause every moment of every day, and yet the wisdom in these few sentences only grows more important the more our technologies and access to information increases. We’ve reached the stage now where we can hear of every new battle, every devastating famine, every natural disaster and celebrity scandal on the other side of the globe more quickly and easily than we can hear what is happening with our own neighbours in our own community. Here’s what C.S. Lewis said about it: