We are bodies.
We are bodies. We are conscious beings. We are souls. We are intelligent selves.
For quite a while, technology has been taking us further apart from our bodies.
What do drugs actually make you experiment? I have the theory that drugs take away all the banalities and leave YOU experimenting with your body and brain. Just you yourself and you.
Because if you think about it, the trip only happens inside your head. The explosion of feelings and emotions only happens inside your brain. To the outside observer you might look different, odd even. But nothing has really changed outside the boundaries of your own mind.
No, Im not saying to launch yourself into the universe of drugs and make yourself irrelevant on this one. I’m saying we can learn and grow so much if we only learn from that “trip”.
Do you remember what you felt the last time you were high?
If you were doing it right probably:
Everything tasted better. Everything had a deeper meaning. Everything was infinite. There was no beginning and ending to nothing. There was no social rights and wrongs. Senses blended into each other making you feel music and listen to a touch. (While regularly you would listen to music and feel a touch).
If you ask me, doing drugs feels like cheating. My theory is that we are meant, and able, to reach this conclusions and this higher state of consciousness by our own means. Without the need of a substance.
The way I believe this is achievable is by going back to ourselves. When we go back to ourselves we actually unlock the true power of our own universe. Some people have been trying to hack this through meditation and breathing techniques. And some other people have been taking the easy way and doing drugs to amplify their understanding of their own consciousness.
Technology on the other hand, does the opposite.
The other day I was talking to a friend about some philosophers. We were debating the truth of the ideals proposed by a modern thinker. We then jumped to discussing books and Jean Paul Sartre. I told her how I used to be a book-eater. I went to bed with a book in my hand, I woke up and took that same book with me the next morning. Some nights, I would stay awake until 3 or 4 am because the book made me feel so much. I have never experienced that with BBM.
Since the availability of modern technology, (in my case it came in the form of a Blackberry) my consumption of written words switched from print to screen. I no longer read while sitting on the toilet, I took my Blackberry and replied to last night’s texts from my crush.
This was the decline of knowledge in my personal experience. Even if more information was available thanks to internet and technology I seemed to be learning less instead of more.
The biographies I used to read got replaced by scrolling through feeds. The novels I used to devour got replaced by short Insta-stories. If I took some time to really analyze my feelings, the only thing I got out of this change of habits was anxiety, depression and a sense of a void. What I was getting was all just meaningless noise.
Before I read adventures and stories that I personally chose at the book store. Now I get fed filtered photos and short Snaps of a virtual “reality”. I wonder how much of that “reality” is actually authentic and true.
Even today, I find myself reading a book and feeling a deep urge to check my phone. No, I’m not expecting any important calls or messages. But the feeling in my stomach is as if I was waiting just for that.
Technology is taking us far away from our bodies. Take for example a modern day family; Before they faced just one major threat: The T.V.
The family’s attention is far away from their bodies and the way they are ingesting their dinner. They are on the moon. Or on the World Cup. Or wherever the T.V. channel is taking them that evening. No wonder we face so many eating-related illnesses. We don’t listen to our bodies and how they feel when they eat this or that. We just feed them whatever the T.V. is telling us to buy.
But today the threat is even bigger. Today a modern family not only faces a T.V. screen but probably five or six tinier screens that represent personalized diversions for each one of the family members.
How are we going to succeed in making a sense of community if we fail to do it at our own dinner tables? The kids are on their iPads, the parents on their phones. The TV is playing some Netflix show on the backround and the connection to their own bodies, or to one another, is long lost.
And I’m not talking from a place of privilege. I come from a developing country where even the poorest families suffer from these distractions. I guess if you search on the more secluded communities you can find the exception to the rule. But if you have been paying attention to how technology has been evolving, you would know that it is only a matter of time until it reaches even the most secluded of communities.
I believe we have to subtly go back to a slower pace. Contrary to popular belief, slow is not bad. Slow is not getting behind. Slow is not missing out.
Once we unraveled the outcome of our fast-moving world we have come to realize that maybe the benefits do not beat the consequences. Today our attention span is no longer than a 30 second video. Our tolerance towards frustration is nonexistent.
This tendency is not new. It has been defended by several people who vow for it. This trend defends that everything should not be done as fast as possible but rather as well as possible.
Slow-fashion, slow-food, slow-media, slow-living. And I guess it all falls into the spectrum of another ideology. Sticking to the principles of what it dictates without questioning the outcome.
I believe that by slowing the pace in which we let technology take over our lives is how we take control back into our hands. Slowly but steadily give a little less power to your social media account, give a little more time to you actual social bonds.
Just because you see (and sometimes reply to) that long-distance friend’s Instastory does not mean you hold a valuable connection. She is showing you her day’s accomplishments (like her 10km run) but she is not talking about her parents recent divorce. You used to be close, right? It is something you would’ve been aware of if you had actually taken the time to ask.
How we ingest information can go back to being nourishing if we look in the right places. We are so used to the 21st century encyclopedia that we barely question Google’s algorithm for our search results.
There is a fine line between technology being useful and technology being harmful. We humans have never been good with fine lines.
This is an invitation to go back to our bodies. The fact that we are able to multitask does not necessarily mean we have to do it. I actually encourage you NOT to do it. Okay, maybe you will take longer to do some stuff but you would be PRESENT in all that stuff you just did. Wouldn’t that be cool?
What do we multitask everyday that affects our ability to be fully present? A lot.
Running and listening to music.
Cooking and talking on the phone.
Showering and tuning into a podcast.
Having breakfast and scrolling through social media.
Sitting on the toilet and checking up the news.
Doing our daily commute and thinking of problems at the office. (Problems, that by the way, you have no means of solving right now.)
Some things you can do at once because in a deeper way they are connected. For example, I like to run while listening to music because in my head I am dancing to the songs. It’s meditation in motion. Not multitasking.
Imagine if next time you took a shower you took the time to massage your body and touch carefully every single inch of it. A lot of breast cancers can be avoided if we just took the time to TOUCH ourselves.
Or maybe next time you are having breakfast leave the phone away so you can actually taste the flavors and immerse yourself in the textures. This might be the secret to achieving the physical state you have been yearning for.
If you like singing in the shower, go ahead and put some music on. It’s not doing two things at once that can be harmful, but the mechanical approach we have to doing stuff that is.
Multitasking: the word itself implies that you HAVE to accomplish different TASKS at the same time. Task, in my opinion, has always had an obligatory connotation to it. So, basically you are obliged to finish the multiple missions you are set to do.
Ex:
task 1: Showering.
task 2: Listening to music.
If you are an eight year old boy I would understand why you would view showering as a task. But in all the other cases, showering is, the act itself, a very special ritual. A blessing even.
And listening to music has never been a task. And I can not think, out of the top of my head, a situation where it would become one.
So why are we so eager to concede the act of such two simple pleasures in life to multitasking?
I invite you to slowly take back the power that we so willingly gave away to technology. (Yes, I used the word slowly on purpose.) I urge you to reconsider your priorities, to come back to your body. I challenge you to calm your mind and listen to your thoughts. I implore you to question everything; even the most established of your principles.
… and as cliché as it sounds: I invite you to enjoy the moment and put the phone down.
