This particular Morning Walk began months ago. Maybe even a year or more. It began with a sense that something didn’t feel right. A nagging in the back of my brain that kept knocking on the door that I wasn’t ready to open.

But turning the latch has been enlightening.

In my recent column, See the Beauty, I pondered what the world would look like if we could see the transmission waves of cell signals. I imagined there being a web from the top of the nearby tower to the phone in my pocket. I wondered what it would look like if I could also see the webs stretching to every person, building and vehicle along my walking path. The scene became a world tethered to a digital mother as we fed at her breast.

Yesterday, I took this analogy farther. What if the web lines changed color based upon the nature of the content flowing back and forth? Would our surroundings be brightened by the yellows, blues and greens of upbeat and positive information? Would it be dark and gray from the heaviness of hate, despair and vitriol? Would we be able to see who receives and sends each type? Would we be surprised at what we learned?

What would people see of me?

Digging deeper, I imagined this digital mother as biased news sites, provocateur influencers and individuals/groups/governments with the intent to misinform, to sway opinion, to influence behavior.

It was not a pretty sight to behold.

Along those web lines I imagined a flow of dopamine to feed the individual when a “Like” is clicked. Oddly enough, this same dopamine high was administered to those who clicked disapproval or the “angry/hate” face.

That dopamine rush became addictive. We go back to the beast to feed, but in larger and stronger doses. We lash out in comment sections with words we would never say face-to-face. We repeatedly go back for another dose. We rush to our social media accounts to post our feelings as soon as something happens, sending out our alerts along the web lines, flying from tower to tower until we get that all important “Like”. We seek to increase the number of people and organizations which follow us, so that the dopamine supply hits faster and stronger.

We learn that Hype and its Evil Twin Outrage are two sides of the same coin. What we don’t realize, until it’s too late, is that we aren’t the ones flipping the coin. It’s the influencers at media outlets, well-known individuals/organizations, political parties and sometimes our own neighbors and friends who pump the juice down the lines.

My revelation came when I opened the door I spoke of earlier in this column. I had long been watching cable news every day. A moment came when I realized I was repeating the same talking points I had heard on these programs. I noticed others online doing the same. It hit me that, as ornery as I can be, I had become one sheep in a massive herd following along without resistance. This rattled me.

I thought long and hard about it and decided to make a change. I turned off cable news, regardless of the outlet. I quit watching those programs, particularly from late in the afternoon through primetime, as they are nothing more than opinion and commentary shows. I turned to the Associated Press as an app on my phone. I read the news now. I don’t listen to or seek out opinions from commentators and, in particular, influencers. Both are carefully scripting responses, even in live questioning, to steer me toward a goal of their choosing.

I decided you can’t blame the hook when a fish is caught, just as I had been. The fish made the decision to bite. It wasn’t the fault of the sweet bait on the hook. But I will not bite anymore.

I now feel cleaner, less slimy. My soul is lighter. I no longer carry the bait.

And I will do my best to keep it that way.