“You’ve got to get yourself together,

You’ve got stuck in a moment,

And now you can’t get out of it.”

I chose a major that did not grace me the option to give the TV a breather last week.

Monday through Friday, the media was oversaturated and the gravity of the events was inescapable. The Boston marathon bombings led to a marathon of a different sort: we became a nation stuck on a channel.

Twitter became the platform law enforcement utilized in updating Boston residents. Everyone became experts in Jeopardy’s current events category. Attention was momentarily diverted with the equally tragic fires in West Texas. Phones vibrated news alerts, beacons of answers for a nation with questions and in chaos. Sports bars were stocked with civil mingling Yankee and Red Sox fans, who, for the first time in history, rooted for the same anything. America was a weird country to call “home” last week.

Friday climaxed with the live, televised manhunt for the second suspect in the marathon bombings. Every news station scrapped the majority of their daily and evening program to keep a streaming audience. Uneventful footage for hours and police scramblings here and there had Americans tube-glued the whole day .

The Washington Post reported abnormally high numbers of man-hunt viewers. “Monday through Thursday, NBC’s newscast averaged 9.3 million viewers, besting ABC’s 8.3 million, and CBS’s 7.1 mil. Fox News Channel averaged nearly 4 million primetime viewers Monday; CNN averaged 2.8 million and MSNBC 1.3 million.”

The numbers stand witness, we became a nation obsessed.

Rather our tuning in to have been a way of sympathizing with those affected or simply out of justified revenge, somehow, we could not look away.

Journalists’ jobs extended beyond the hours of 8-5, The Boston Globe staff clocking in 16-18-hour days since the bombings last Monday. Americans stood on the virtual sidelines, cheering tireless law enforcement and local heroes who sought to bring the criminals to justice. Clearly, last week, no one took to the break room.

And while being informed and knowledgeable of current events makes you an active and relevant American citizen, the never-ending news stream prevents the beginnings of processing and dealing with tragedies, such as last week’s Boston bombings.

After September 11, U2’s single “Stuck in a Moment” became an anthem in my household, countering a nation’s depression epidemic. After a weekend consumed in tragedy and attempts at explanations of evil and loss, I found myself repeating the lyrics, a message to our nation and myself: Tune into what is good and turn off the tube.

“And if the night runs over

And if the day won’t last

And if your way should falter

Along this stony pass

It’s just a moment

This time will pass.”