Mindfulness

When I started college, I didn’t have a computer. I had never been on the internet, either, so when someone told me I should check it out, I had to write down the steps it took to insert a “URL” into a “tool bar.” What was this “world wide web” business? In pencil on yellow paper, I had written: www.yahoo.com. It was a strange word for something that seemed so serious.

My first email account was through Juno, which I checked on the big computer of my friend who lived down the hall. Then I found rocketmail, still the coolest name for an email provider. After eating our dinner at the cafeteria, my friends and I would wander to the library to sit at the seven computers they had and check email or read news. After 15 minutes, we’d leave together to return to our dorm rooms, where we did homework and talked and ate the cookies wrapped in napkins we’d taken from the dinner buffet. We also watched Dawson’s Creek, but only on Wednesdays. My days were lively.

In the apartment I rented after college, I used my computer for work projects only. I rarely, if ever, activated my dial-up internet. There was nothing I was seeking, and if ever there was, I’d just wait until I was in the faculty room the following morning.

So when I went on a reading diet this past week, shunning news and social media like email, facebook, Twitter and blogs, I was relieved to recognize that a world without the internet was fairly recognizable to me. It was hard to get used to it the first few days, my fingers eager for buttons to push, my eyes drifting to the same dusty corners of the living room. But most of us have lived most of our lives without constant connection to the internet. Before the upsurge in the past few years, before iPhones and laptops and iPads, I still lived my life well, and fully.

The statement I keep coming back to from William Powers, who wrote Hamlet’s Blackberry, is that we’re not necessarily eager to connect all the time—it’s that we’re afraid of not being connected. In the week of separating myself from internet reading, nothing imploded. Or exploded. Everything is right where I left it, and most of it is junk.

The swarm of information coming toward us in our technological age is like a rash that gets itchier and spreads as you scratch it. At first, the scratching feels good, but then you notice that it has spread all over your body (another email account to check, another notification on your phone, another status to update). Before you know it, you’re an itching machine. Who were you before all of this itching and scratching? Wasn’t there a time of calm, of peace, when your skin wasn’t stinging?

Yes, in fact. And it’s still there. What I noticed this week is that if I stop scratching, the itching starts to go away.

It wasn’t until five days into my reading diet that I stopped moping and met myself again. There I was, the same old me, just buried for a while underneath a bunch of clutter. I felt less anxious, less overwhelmed, because I wasn’t stuffing my head full of words under the guise of productivity and knowledge. I was able to breathe more easily as I took on one task at a time. When I was with my kids, I was really with them, rather than seeking out some other sort of stimulation through The Huffington Post (which has really gone downhill, by the way). Removing myself from social media didn’t make me feel more isolated, as I’d feared. I actually felt less lonely as my world got smaller and my imagination peeked through. I listened to people’s conversations, took note of their shoes and the expressions on their faces, reflected on things I was not going to feel compelled to share publicly, and got more in tune with the deeper parts of myself.

As Monday neared, I knew I had changed. Instead of planning all of the reading I wanted to do once the week ended, I realized I would take my time. I had been approaching books like races to be won, and I want to go back to savoring them like a three-course meal. When I got up this morning, I assumed I’d return to my old habit of drinking coffee while checking email or blog postings or facebook. But that just didn’t feel right. Instead, I wrote in my journal.

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron talks about an inner voice that exists if we’re willing to listen. I’ve been a reading addict, feeding myself with so many words, that my guiding voice didn’t have much space. And while I didn’t write thousands of words or clean my house from top to bottom; while I still found myself depleted of energy after dealing with my kids, reluctant to do laundry or prepare for my fall classes, I know that I cleared a space for that voice. Luckily, she’s beginning to talk.

At some point, I lost the ability to sit still and stare into space, to look at my surroundings like an inspired traveler from a distant land. By forcing myself to pause and let my mind wander beyond the immediate and the necessary, I feel like I’ve reclaimed something important, and I’m determined not to lose it again. So even if it takes me longer to read books, or my blog gets fewer hits, or I don’t know the latest political gossip, I am willing to be more fearless. That’s a trait I’ve always admired.

Image by “galaxies and hurricanes” via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

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Tagged as: Hamlet's Blackberry, Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way, William Powers