There’s a little light in your car that can cause a surprising amount of trouble.

The dome light.

Leave it on for a few minutes and nothing happens. Leave it on all night and you may come back to a dead battery.

The light itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that it stayed on too long.

I think about that when I think about the news.

There’s so much coming at us all the time. War and unrest around the world. Political infighting and name calling. Wildfires. Climate worries. Financial markets swinging wildly. Gas prices. Violence. Tragedy. Crisis.

There’s no stopping point. The news is always there.

The red banners flash BREAKING NEWS. The talking heads dissect what happened, what might happen next, and what it all means. Then there’s another story. Another alert. Another reason to keep watching. Or scrolling.

Staying informed matters. We should know what’s happening in the world. We should understand the issues that affect our communities, our country and the people around us.

But there’s a difference between being informed and being immersed. Immersion wears us down.

We can spend an hour reading about things over which we have little or no control and then wonder why we feel agitated, distracted or exhausted.

We carry it into dinner. Into our work. Into conversations with people we love.

Sometimes we carry it right into bed with us, the phone glowing inches from our face as we take in one more awful thing before trying to sleep.

That’s the battery running down.

And the trouble is that our attention and energy are finite. If we give too much of them to the endless stream of bad news, we have less available for the life that’s actually in front of us.

Less capacity to notice a beautiful morning, enjoy a meal, take a walk, do good work or really listen when someone we care about is talking.

So the answer isn’t to tune out. It’s to create better boundaries.

Decide when you’ll check the news rather than allowing the news to decide when it gets access to you. Turn off the constant alerts. Choose a few reliable sources. Check in once or twice a day, then move on.

Be mindful about what you let in. Be intentional about how long you stay there.

The world will keep turning while you take a walk, have dinner, read a book or sit quietly for a while.

And the news will still be there when you come back.

Take care of your battery so that you can actually live this one wild and precious life.