Boundaries

In high school, I used to buy a newspaper every day from the librarian. He sold them in the front hallway, and I'd grab one on my way in. I would start with the sports section, then the comics, turn the paper over and read some headlines, then work my way to the columnists.

One thing I recall that didn't happen — I wasn't frustrated. I wasn't upset or mad. I didn't carry the day's events around in my head. I read the paper, I put the paper down, and I went on with my day.

Now, as an adult, as soon as I see a headline, I am stressed. I devote considerable effort to avoiding the news — avoiding my phone, journaling, meditating, praying — just to keep the weight of the world from settling on my chest before breakfast.

Why is this?

I've been sitting with that question, and I think the answer isn't just one thing. It's several things that converged while we weren't paying attention.

A physical newspaper was a bounded object. I picked it up, I put it down. It had edges. It had an end. Today's news is engineered for infinite scroll, push notifications, and algorithmic amplification of outrage. The delivery system itself triggers stress responses that a folded newspaper never could. The paper didn't follow me to the bathroom, didn't buzz in my pocket during dinner, and didn't light up on my nightstand at 2 AM.

As a high school kid, I chose the order. Sports first, then comics, then headlines, then columnists. I was in control of the experience. I decided what to read, when to read it, and when to stop. Digital news removes that agency entirely. Headlines ambush you on your lock screen before you've had your coffee. Notifications interrupt your prayers. Algorithms decide what you see and in what order, and they don't optimize for your peace — they optimize for your attention.

Every crisis now feels personal. I can trace a line from the headline to my household. That kind of relevance didn't exist when I was seventeen and my biggest concern was the box score.

The business model changed. News organizations don't just inform anymore — they compete for your emotional engagement and keep you scrolling through anxiety. Fear keeps you reading. Outrage keeps you sharing. Peace doesn't generate revenue.

That newspaper had a built-in delay. Events happened, journalists wrote, editors curated, the paper was printed, and it arrived the next morning. That lag created emotional distance. There was time between the event and my awareness of it — time for context, for proportion, for someone to make sense of it before handing it to me. Now we experience events in real time with no processing buffer, no editorial filter, and no endpoint. The news cycle doesn't end because it was never designed to.

Reading the paper was a ritual. A defined time, a defined place, a beginning and an end. I bought it in the hallway. I read it when I read it. I was done when I was done. That's fundamentally different from the ambient hum of news that now permeates every device and platform I touch throughout the day. The ritual had boundaries. The current model has none.

I used to have other rituals too. Cutting out comic strips and hanging them on my wall. Hanging up the NCAA Men's tournament bracket, filling it out, and keeping it up until the next year.

Am I becoming the old man screaming at the cloud? Waxing nostalgic about the good old days?

I don't think so. I'm very tech-savvy, but I do realize that like anything, it comes with consequences. Everything is permissible but not beneficial, as the Apostle Paul once said.

Here's what I've come to realize: the journaling, the meditating, the praying, the deliberate avoidance of my phone — these aren't signs of weakness. They are me trying to rebuild the container that the newspaper naturally provided. The discipline I exercise now to avoid the news is the modern equivalent of what used to just be the default experience of consuming it.

That seventeen-year-old in the hallway wasn't more disciplined than I am now. He just lived in a world where the boundaries were built in. The paper had edges. The news had an end. And when he put it down, it stayed down.

We don't live in that world anymore. So now, the boundaries are ours to build.