I used to listen to NPR every morning and evening during my commute, but I had to stop.
I would hear a story about Iraqi widows and children living in metal trailers with no air conditioning in the baking sun, with no jobs and no way out of their situation, and I would chew on it day and night, wondering what can I do? So many times, I hear something horrific and I don’t know where to put the information, other than to pray about it. Listening to NPR made me feel helpless and sometimes a bit hopeless, so I stopped listening. I am now less informed, but less neurotic. (Still praying, though.)
I started listening to music on my commute — not the funky jazz Bob likes (sarcastically dubbed “70’s porn music” by a younger friend), or the bubblegum hiphop my kids like (”and a Britney song was on, and a Britney song was on”). My taste is my own — Stevie Ray Vaughn, Patsy Cline, Pavarotti, Louis Armstrong. There is no common denominator there, only that I like it.
Lately, not only have I been listening to this music, I’ve been singing to it — loud, in the car, by myself, even at stop lights when someone could look over and see this crazy middle-aged woman singing “Crazy,” at the top of her lungs.
Why am I doing this? To stay sane, I think.