I love this poem by Wendell Berry which includes this line: "Live a three-dimensional life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in."
Every other article I read lately seems to be about the frantic pace and over-connected lives we are leading due to electronics - cell phones, e-mails, Facebook. Is all this connection good or is it bad? Is our frazzlement due solely to electronics or are there other, inherently human forces at play?
I recently read two articles in Utne Reader that address the issue. In A Nation Distracted, Maggie Jackson is concerned that we are becoming so shaped by electronic distraction that "we are redefining 'smart' to mostly mean twitch speed, multitasking, and bullet points." In The Focused Life, Winifred Gallagher's experience of a serious illness motivated her to focus on life and to explore the idea of focus in general - and our choice to choose what we focus on in our own lives. Both made me think.
When my older children were little, we decided to put the tv in the closet. It was too tempting for me to let them watch it for one thing, which they were very happy to do for seemingly any length of time. We didn't have a VCR (much less a computer) so this made us screen-free. Once in a while, if there was something worth the trouble of hauling the thing out of the closet, we would do so, but in general, my kids were encouraged by the lack of screen entertainment to play with each other, their friends, and outside. These days (I am old!), I find it troubling to hear parents proudly say their kids don't watch tv at all and yet don't count the time they are watching DVDs or playing video games - or consider it particularly problematic. I'm shocked at the amount of time eight to eighteen-year olds spend in front of a screen on average - 7.5 hours, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study. Recent research indicates - surprise, surprise! - that for each hour a child spends in front of a screen each day, the risk of developing attention related problems later increases by ten percent. But I think Wendell Berry really gets to the heart of the issue. A human being spending nearly half their waking hours this way is living a life mediated by a screen, obscured by a screen, and virtually dominated by a screen. What a huge experiment we are performing on our children.
And on ourselves. I am troubled, too, by the amount of time I spend in front of a computer screen. I am writing a blog, but I keep checking tabs that show I have a new email or Facebook comment. I am surprised by how quickly time passes while I flit from one idea to another: "Hmmm. looking for a recipe for blueberry pie. . . wait a minute! here's one for green beans... on a blog that links to another blog of someone living in the south... who makes all her own clothes out of recycled material... who purchases patterns from a French shop... turn on my online dictionary... go to her blog, oh, what a cute little kid, and... wedding photos of people I don't even know and won't ever meet! . . . wait, what am I doing here and how long have I spent doing this?" This is me, the wise adult aware of my choices, solidly in the middle-age recognition that my time is running out. What about our kids?!
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensional life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
This is the life I want to live, fully aware of the sacredness that is actually - not virtually - present around me. To "be here, now," as the saying goes. Oy.
[Photo: Yup, this is our own little Riley, earbudded and mesmerized by the screen version of bulldozers digging a hole!]
