Knowledge is Power

and then you act

photo credit: Tima Miroshnichenko pexels.com

Restless, argumentative, frightened: this is how I characterize my friends these days. Myself, I wake up angry.

I do not need to tell you why so much of this angst is floating around. It is spring 2025, Trump is president of the United States, Canada is having a national election, and the world has pretty much gone to hell in a hand basket. Really? Another war? What is wrong with you people? Existential threats indeed.

In response, I wrote earlier this year about defiance and becoming thoughtful about where to spend money (here) It was followed by a piece about losing trust (here).

Now I want to talk about the positive steps anyone can take to deal with the current climate of anxiety, fear or mistrust. This is a column about what you can do to keep your wits about you, stay functional and feel a little better.

You already know how to do each of these things. Knowledge may be power, but then you need to actually act.

If you want to do the hard thing first, get off social media and starkly cut back your time on line for any reason. The online world is a place of poor to bad information. It is the equivalent of a diet of junk food, and you’ve got to stop it if you want to keep your mental health. You may need to work on a computer, but you can stop the mental equivalent of scarfing down the potato chips.

That step is just to get some mental balance back and return to doing your thinking yourself. I am not just talking, I am doing this. Like salad in the fridge, I am spending more time just reading real books, on paper. It is a completely different form of mental activity and very soothing, like a good walk or a bit of “forest bathing”.

There are other mental activities instead of doomscrolling. I write this substack online, but I don’t do that every day or all day. Beyond just voting, I am more politically active. It has turned out to be far easier than I thought. In Canada, no one will detain me for it and I’d like to keep it that way.

I volunteer for my local riding association for the Canadian political party of my choice. Right now I make telephone fundraising calls. It is the work nobody likes to do, calling strangers and asking for money. It turns out that years of interviewing patients about their personal lives has prepared me rather well for this. Remember to speak calmly and professionally, stay on topic, do not poke about in areas that are none of my business and respect personal confidences. Be kind. Don’t take abrupt or angry responses personally. Oh yes, and ask for a donation. Aside from the money part, I have been doing exactly this work for years.

But I also put up, and collected back, lawn signs in the provincial election just one month ago. Which was a hoot, I tell you. I knew I had really gotten into it on one very cold and windy day, when I had climbed a huge snowdrift at the side of the road. I had with me a form of digging stick and a snow shovel. There I was, on my knees in the snow, 72 years old with gray hair flying, whaling away at a lawn sign that had turned up frozen into the top of a pile of snow. I was, I realized, having a blast.

This is an important part, doing things with other people in a joint effort. Part of my restless anger this winter has been a sense of loss of power. I was frightened and angry and just buying Canadian was good, but not good enough. But when I spent more time working with the riding association, I was busy doing productive things. It has helped me stay calmer. I am not, by any means, back to ground zero but I am much less angry. I am too busy doing things. Hello, this is Lorraine calling from the campaign for....

It is rather straightforward: get off line, improve the mental diet, get to work with others in productive activity. These things involve changing behaviour. There is some sort of activation threshold, the point at which an existential threat overcomes sitting online for hours. The point where anger and impotence get too much. Have you hit that point yet?

Feel it and then act.

You can be a victim of change or a participant. Only one choice actually feels good. Surprisingly easy.