I recently heard an eyewitness account from a man who was near the World Trade Center on 9/11. He struggled to find the words to explain what the sound was like when the tower came down and the debris cloud overtook him, saying something to the effect of, "Did you ever hear something that was so loud that it was silent? Like, there's so much noise that you can't hear anything at all? That's what it was like."
My life feels like that sometimes. This head of mine is a noisy place to live. The barrage of input can feel overwhelming...the rising and falling chaos that is my children, the background buzz of living in a busy part of New Jersey, and the other physical noises provide a backdrop for the rest of the stimuli that come my way. I'm on the internet continually throughout the day, checking email, checking weather, checking Facebook, clicking on interesting news stories, finding the answers to random questions (I'm a curious person), and generally going down cyber bunny trails. I do a great percentage of my shopping online. My kids probably watch too much tv (not CRAZY much, but still...), and the soundtrack of my life often features Blue's Clues, the Fairly OddParents, or Dora "I-scream-everything-I-say" the Explorer. When I have down time, I play Jewel Quest on my non-smart-phone. That's on top of the managing of everyone's schedules and buses and activities and appointments and all the people and information involved in all of those.
Plus I sing, like, all day long. But that's not going to stop anytime soon.
There are times when the noise (literal and figurative) gets so loud and so constant that I stop hearing any of it. I start to shut down, intellectually speaking, and all of it becomes a sort of indistinct blur. It feels numb and sort of brain-sleepy, if that makes any sense.
And so I set out to try a week-long media fast. I wanted to see what would happen if I turned down the volume for a few days.
The goal was to stay away from the computer except for necessary work- or ministry-related tasks. I planned to ask Mark to check my email every couple of days to see if there was anything important in there. No TV, no Wii (which I'm rarely on anyway), no web-surfing, no Facebook, no Twitter, no blogging, no Pinterest, no games on my phone. I figured I'd allow myself to text, since that's mostly task-oriented in my life.
I set out with firm resolve and my customary optimism, and here's what I mainly learned:
I can't do it.
If a successful media fast is defined by seven days during which you make dishearteningly extensive use of media every single day, then my media fast was a raging success.
Here's an overview of what happened.
- Email. This took me about two hours to discover. I cannot disconnect from email. It's too much a part of the networking of my life, and I quickly realized that to detach from it would be pretty rude to those around me who depend on my receiving and sending information that way. I stink at the phone, so those who know me know email is the way to get me. To vanish from that medium would just be obnoxious. So, ok, I'd stay on email. But I'd try to keep it on task, and everything else was still game on.
- My kids. They have needs that involve the web. Joy needed to get on a keyboarding practice site, find the cyber version of her math text, and research artist trading cards. Both she and Will needed book club orders placed online. And I'm supposed to check their teachers' web pages frequently. All right...but just on-task stuff for the kids.
- Vital Information. What's the weather going to be like today? I don't know. Is the gym open on Jewish holidays? I don't know. How much flour goes into the batter? I don't know. When is that road supposed to be open again? I don't know. When is my package getting here? I don't know. Apparently I don't know anything that the internet doesn't tell me. Ok, but just what I really need to know.
- Family bonding. I didn't impose my ban on the rest of my family. I really believe I could easily go a week without tv, but it's hard when it's on anyway. Mark watched a movie one night, and when I went into the living room to ask him a question, I got sucked in and watched the last half. Over the weekend, Joy and Will went to a movie with Daddy, and Jack's consolation prize was to watch a movie at home with me. I think that was it, but that was enough to railroad my success in the TV realm.
- Moderation, or lack thereof. Here's the real kicker. I'm no good at moderation in any area of life, and media is no exception. Even with all of the above concessions, I could have really made a dent in the media madness in my life, but it's really, really hard for me to start doing something and then stop. I'm much better at either stopping cold turkey or...what's the opposite of that? Running rampant? Something. But once I was online looking at the weather, or placing a book order for Will, the odds that I was going to shut it off and walk away were pretty slim. I found myself on websites (Pinterest was a big culprit) that were totally unnecessary.
The experiment was saved from total failure by a couple of redeeming victories:
- Facebook. I did manage to stay off fb completely for the week, I think, except for going on there to retrieve a message Mark told me was waiting for me and needed my attention. And I've been on it almost not at all since, which is both a blessing and a challenge. I'm going to need to figure out how to stay up to date with people in some other way.
- Aftermath. I have to say...surprisingly, I have definitely been online less since I finished the fast. Maybe it had a little bit of lasting impact after all. Of course, that also means that I have been working on this post for about 3 weeks. Maybe it's time to end it.
I'm not sure how to sum the whole thing up. I didn't have any life-changing experiences engendered by the quietness of my heart. I don't feel like it was a total waste of time, though...I'm tucking away the knowledge that I am hopelessly attached to the digital world, and maybe Jesus and I will work on that at some point. For now, though, I'm in a race to my Nov. 16 finish line, so I have other things to think about. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment