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There is negativity everywhere, and bad news is a part of life. In fact the only guarantee at the end of life is death and that's not the best bit of news I've ever received. But lets find some context here and get to the bottom of what we consider to be news. Is news a famine in Ethiopia, a hurricane in Florida? Well yes. But equally, news is your kid saying his first word, finding out your friends latest embarrassing story or discovering a new flavour of ice-cream. In fact, news is any new piece of information relevant to you.

When I spend a couple of hours on the motorway driving home from work, and the radio starts telling me about Global Warming, the onset of climate changes killing the planet for our children's children and the war in Iraq has taken the lives of another twenty soldiers, I can take it in, feel bad and then come home to my 8 month old boy and get the news from my house that he is now saying Dada. This doesn't trivialise the awful news heard earlier, but I just realise that the good news is there for me as well, I just have to look a little closer to home at times.

The only issue here then comes down to our desire to share our news, and then we question the relevance. A natural disaster is relevant to everyone, but my new pistachio almond melt might not be. However, so long as we have a work colleague, friend or family member in earshot, we can just as easily discuss the state of the world as we can the pigeon that hit your jacket with the avian version of Blue Ice.

Think of it like this. News comes in many forms - and is not always relevant to everyone - but there is one thing you can be sure of; That for every disaster, there are many more flavours of ice-cream to try.

Learn more about this author, Danny Lack.
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