I've come to a self-realization recently. It's nothing fun, but self-realizations rarely are. They're usually things like: I eat my weight in carbs everyday or I curse more than a sailor with tourettes syndrome. My realization is this: On a daily basis, I fill my life with more junk than anything meaningful or productive. Sometimes that applies to my eating habits, which sometimes include more Chipotle than salads... but mostly I'm just talking about what I do with my time.
Though I have a few days during the week when I could do volunteer work for Habitat for Humanity, what usually ends up happening is I'll vow to go right after I check my e-mail and I turn on the computer. Then I'll start Facebooking, which turns into You Tube and so on. Before you can say "Brain Slurpee", half of my afternoon is gone and I've done nothing of value. All I've accomplished is turning oxygen into carbon dioxide and converting pop tarts into fat. After filling my head with so much nonsense, it literally will start to hurt. I'll seriously get a headache from all the crap I've watched. And it is crap. Why do we insist on watching these meaningless videos? It's a mind-numbing addiction.
I find that I won't work on my talents, like art, because I have this craving for the meaningless. After all, art requires skill and thinking. It seems that some days, thinking is just asking too much. Instead of accomplishing something real, I'd rather devote my time to a fake accomplishment that means absolutely nothing in the long run. Such as reaching the next level in whatever game I happen to be playing at the time. All I get from them is a false sense of accomplishment and many wasted hours.
After so long, I began to feel ill. Just sick and empty. Isn't there some novel out there that I could be reading instead that has some kind of moral to it? Something that'll make me think and not have to do with the undead, vampires and werewolves? Do such books exist any longer? Is there a movie I can watch that won't make me lose IQ points anymore? After such ponderings, I forced myself to go outside and I felt better. I made myself read some non-fiction (which is blissfully vampire-free). Once again I realized that I'm here for a purpose, and none of it involves status updates on Facebook.
I guess what I'm saying is there's too much junk and some of us are making ourselves sick with it. What you fill your life with is important because it affects what you get out of it. Have adventures, don't just read about them. Learn something that isn't celebrity related. Turn off the TV for an hour and watch a sunset. If you're filled up with garbage, there won't be room for anything meaningful! In conclusion, if I see another stupid vampire novel become popular, there's going to be a mass book burning in the very near future.
it is so easy to get into that groove, i did it yesterday, but i was determined to since i never have the chance otherwise. i'm in a group, i'll send you the link, and hopefully it will help you get out of this slump!
ReplyDeleteKudos. Major kudos.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's well and good to be very type A and not allow yourself a sense of contentment if you didn't make a measurable positive impact on the world today, I don't think that comparatively denigrates a lifestyle that is less driven by exterior impact.
ReplyDeleteCharity in particular can be a horrible conceit. To live to help others implicitly implies that you are submerging your own self importance. Is it worth it, when the self is probably the most precious thing you have? You'll face death someday all by yourself, and you are your constant companion. Why set aside something so intimate? Bill Gates didn't start out with philanthropy by doing poor man's charity labor. He made himself and his kin filthy rich first, then took what was extra and made that into his charity. Enrich and secure the self first. It sure worked a lot better for all involved.
I once knew a girl who was fixated on helping third worlders get fresh water. She was a pretentious, snotty bitch, so I was always wondering why she didn't worry about fixing THAT first before she worried about the kind of causes they ask you to give money to on TV.
So, going out and making a differrence really doesn't seem as important to me as securing my own needs first. I'll never enrich the lives of others if my own life is poor. Love yourself before you love others, you know? Or you can't be loved.
As far as how this relates to having an appetite for electronic distractions, it's just the same thing. You want to do it, and the part of your mind that processes data without words made the decision that having a laugh on Facebook was better than thinking of something to draw. Why fight it? Building relationships through the internet, having friends who knew me in real time and laughed at funny cat videos with me will make me feel a lot better on my deathbed than if I had written the next Great American Novel or installed a fresh water well in some sub-saharan community. If I have time for writing a book I'm sure the main character's love of silly cat videos would help make it a pretty great, more three dimensional read.
Besides, there's science out there that says vegging out doing low-headwork things like dicking around on facebook actually helps your brain sort it's subvocal marbles out and do the hard work like forming longterm memories, since you're not using all it's computing power on something big and immediate. Crazy, isn't it?