I fell asleep last night with such high hopes for an 'awakening' morning. It is Easter morning and I knew the weather would be quite Spring-like. And as I awoke with pain in my feet, a chill in the air and deepness of sleeplessness forfeited the night before, I realized that there felt like a lot to get through to the awakening I wanted. I finally made it to my computer. But the Lenten ‘fast’ I had just finished from the ‘flat-screen’ world of relating called loudly to me as I readjusted my ‘offline-ness’ to being on-line again. So many, so many distractions…that seem so innocuous, yet are so unambivalent in the waste of their pursuit. I wonder if the appeal of online reality (or unreality as it may be) is the illusion of choice. The belief that I can choose what I want to pursue, big or small, with the only restraint being someone around me giving me the feeling that I spend too much time doing it. Does choice offer me power, false as it may be? Do I believe in a kind of power that is simply easier to follow, easier to navigate than the thick thickets involved in real human relating?
I think the thing that caught my eye at the origin of this year’s fast were the following lines from an article, by Anne Jackson, called, “The Facebook Fast”:
Online connections are good. They can be deep and good for our souls. But when we turn them into an online community, they can, and do, impact our face-to-face interactions. When we spend more time staring at a glowing monitor than we do into the eyes of those we love, or need to love, it might be time to shut off the computer.
Among other things, I think it is just easier to choose 'away' from people. We are lazy. We are often confused, hurt, and paralyzed by how to move towards other people. And so, an option to devote more energy to our own ‘profile’ makes things feel much easier. And then there is the addicting part of self-presentation…and the deception it leads us towards about ourselves. Looking into the eyes of others is a highly personal and intimate act, which forces us into something we might not otherwise believe or know about. There are things that are much greater than the confusion and pain we often experience with others. Things much, much greater. And the false-security we are offered through non-human relating is, at the very least, a naïve and unfortunate forfeit of the greater mysteries of courage, compassion, and love.
I have found that I am far more tethered to the flat-screen life than I would like. My bills now come on it, my communication is now embedded in it. My way of participating, even knowing the world is now almost inextricably dependent on it. We, as a culture, are all about doing things fast, quickly. And much of our non-human technology is designed to help us ‘relate’ more efficiently. It simply takes less time to e-mail a bunch of people about something, than it does to call them or go see them. But on the hill greased with the appeal of efficiency I wonder about the quality of time I spend ‘getting more things done faster’. Do I really get to know people better, more deeply or do I mostly spend myself telling others about me, the way I would like them to see me. When I talk with someone or visit them, I have to listen. I have to at least act interested. It is required; to not do so would be rude. But I don’t even have to pretend on-line that I am interested in what someone else is saying.
In many ways, things that take time are better and believe it or not, efficiency is not. As I leave my fast this year, I want to acknowledge the humanity of those God has placed around me. They are for me and I am for them. We are not made to experience each other primarily through a flat screen. We are not card-board cutouts waiting for the apparel and hairstyle change of the next commercial we offer of ourselves. We are the fallen, sometimes beautiful, but more often than not messy human-beings that have the mysterious power of God, not in our presentation of ourselves, but in the participation with ourselves in the same messy lives of others, to offer to someone else. I believe more and more that ‘life is the discovery of God’…in nature, in ourselves and in others. Let’s keep turning towards this truth and away from the illusions we are enticed with from this increasingly dehumanized world.
This is part of the power I hope for from today’s Easter reminder.
