In 2020, I suffered from a period of overwhelm. It was brought on by the flooding of current event updates disguised as news but served unto me as advertisement. The only way I knew how to save myself was to shut off my phone from all the noise.
I found that the proliferation of chatter was the reason behind useless anxiety caused by the need to be plugged into the information (and misinformation) of others. Ironically, this connectedness with the living world led to a disconnectedness from the self which resulted in confusion and agony, leading up to the miseries plaguing our species – doubt, fear, uncertainty, etc.
I wonder, upon looking at those around me, whether the proximity of our noses to our cell phone screens is the factor behind the lack of proximity to other human beings. I wonder how the big companies have won. How the attention economy has grown so that we pay companies in terms of our precious brain cells rather than dollar bills – and when exactly did they decide to target our thinking power and our time?
It’s like they knew that dialing the volume meters on our social media apps is the exact method by which they could silence our voices. By letting us share experiences, they took away the motivation to make our very own – a robot army full of knowledge and lacking any real stimuli.
It worked, you know?
Shutting off my phone to shut up the noise.
Turning off the media was when I started to hear myself.
The cadence of my neuronal firing returned to a humanly beat and reality was returned to me. It isn’t a matter of never subscribing to knowledge or information, but rather, one should learn from slow-living and be concerned by the RATE with which we gather information – lest we be reduced to a tiny node in the homogenous network created by a handful of “thinkers” spreading a singular message of their choosing.
I hope to impress upon others the importance of processing information with adequate space and in due time – the factors that increase our overall human experience and reconnect us to being a part of this planet. It is no longer a matter of having experienced enough if you aren’t even immersed in the experience itself. At that point, it’s like you experience nothing at all.
It bears repeating again and again: Slow. it. down.
Love this post! I made 2021 my “year of being gentle with myself” and I’ve had to slow myself down multiple times and remind myself this.
That’s so awesome that you did that! I find I keep needing to remind myself, too. It’s definitely not easy. It’s such a conscious practice and the outside world tries to drag us into a quicker pace but I plant my feet firmly in the ground and resist the pull as often as I can. 🙂