By now you may have noticed that social media has no shortage of imminent doom and catastrophic crises. We are begged to save everything from the non-migratory African Swallow laden with a coconut (that’s for you Monty Python fans), to the environment, to people we have never heard of who are the victims of the biggest injustice since five minutes ago, and everything in between. I’m starting to think that Chicken Little invented social media for her benefit!

The truth is there is only so much any of us can respond to with integrity. When we are overwhelmed with requests to respond to non-emergent emergencies we can become cynical. I have found that a good practice is to simply remove people who are serial crises reporters from my news feed. If there is something truly urgent that requires my prompt response, more than a handful of people will be passing that information along. On the other hand, if it’s just another chicken little declaring the sky is falling, I don’t have to worry about it. We seem to have arrived at a place where any sort of misfortune is seen as contrary to the way the universe works. That’s a distorted perception of the highest magnitude!