Putting the News on Pause

I have discovered a way to pause my professional-grade attention to developments in the news.

Some of you already may be familiar with this countermeasure, but it’s new to me.

When I pick up my infant grandson, the rest of the world fades away.

No matter what I’m thinking about (such as what I’m going to write about in my next column), when I hold him, most everything else becomes out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

That includes whatever article I was reading or the news being reported on the television. I suddenly lack the bandwidth necessary to consider the day’s headlines.

For example, the war with Iran (which we’ve been told some three dozen times was on the verge of ending), the “is it open or closed” Strait of Hormuz, or the latest ALL CAPS saber-rattling — these are put on pause.

The lengthy, heated, and expensive election campaigns in the United States (Election Day is Nov. 3) and the machinations of Israel’s government and elections (Israelis vote on Oct. 27) — at that moment, I have no time for them.

Not even the woeful state of Atlanta United or the pending start of the English Premier League season intrudes.

Nope. I’m absorbed and mesmerized by every change in his facial expression, every shift of movement in my arms, even his every cry for sustenance or a multi-sensory statement of the need for a diaper change.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Since coming home from the neonatal intensive care unit, he has steadily gained weight and with each visit we see an advance in his motor skills.

Don’t ask how many pictures of him I have on my phone. Yes, he’s my screensaver.

As soon as I hand him back to his mother or father (or his grandmother swoops in), those other issues return, vying for my attention.

If I talked with my grandson about today’s news, would I say that these are times that will shape the world he grows up in? Of course they are, though I suspect that in the history books he studies, 2026 (at least thus far) may merit less than a page, maybe just a paragraph.

I would tell him that the impact of the most consequential actions taken today may not be evident for some time and, by then, the legacy of those responsible will be left to the judgment of history.

When I think about my grandson’s future, I focus beyond the noise of today’s 24-hour news networks and online sites. How, I wonder, will life have changed when he is 20 years old?

Can anyone reliably say how technologies still relatively new to most of us and technologies not yet introduced will impact how he lives and learns?

Can anyone reliably forecast the health of Jewish life in America two decades hence, or the position of Israel in the Middle East, or the status of relations between the United States and Israel?

Decades in the news business have taught me to be wary of anyone claiming to speak with certainty.

It may well take a decade, or two, to assess the repercussions of policies that devalue government agencies that, among other things, safeguard the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, as well as those that promote public health, care for veterans, regulate approval of medicines, and protect consumers against financial fraud.

It will take time to restore the mechanisms by which a child in an impoverished corner of the world learns of something called the United States of America because that name is written on the sack of seed or grain that helps sustain their family or because of a program that supports the nurse or doctor who gives them a painful shot to improve their health or prevent disease.

As each generation seeks to set right the world bequeathed to it, each can take its charge from the words of Rabbi Tarfon in the Pirkei Avot (a collection of rabbinic teachings compiled around the year 200 CE): “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.”

So much will happen between now and when my grandson’s generation takes up that mantle, so much that cannot be foreseen, so much than cannot be imagined.

For now, though, barely three months after he entered the world, it is enough for me to hold him and let other issues fade into the background.