It is as simple as that. Want to be happier? Seems like a rhetorical question, but maybe not (masochists aside). Just unplug. Stop consuming, stop obsessing, stop scrolling, delete the apps, leave your cell phone on the kitchen counter more often, just get back to being human.
There is a world of shades between modernity and luddite. I am still using my phone to gain entry into multiple sporting events and multiple concerts this week (not a typical week mind you, I am middle aged after all). I am typing this into “the cloud” of course whatever the hell that really means.
But I have essentially never had social media on my phone. Never. The only exceptions being when traveling if I know that the people I am seeing use some of those tools for communication. I mean the biggies, Facebook, Tic Toc, Instagram, etc. I know that I am happier because of this. I know that the curated casino-style drug rush of those offerings comes at a high price and I am not willing to pay it. I do not take electronics to the dinner table. I do not sleep with my phone in my room unless logistically impossible to not do so, and then I turn it off.
But don’t stop there. Keep withdrawing from the Matrix. Stop consuming news. We did not have continuous push-notification curation for thousands of years of the gossamer interface between us and the rest of the planet and we did just fine. Do I really need to know how many people were blown up in Lebbanon or which particular powerful man this week drugged and debased the victims of the week? How is this making me happier or more human or spreading love or building the world that I want to live in. If we want to live in it we need to build it and building it is antithetical to living in a Facebook-MSN-FOX-Instragram mirage. Am I happier with 100+ channels compared to the four we had on that clunky box growing up? Did the remote control afford salvation or condemnation?
The world will creep in as there will be billions around you still plugged in. I learned of the 9-11 attacks all those years ago from a dream state lying in a friend’s cabin listening to the ocean that Tuesday morning when she came into my room and said “Ray I think you need to get up”. You won’t miss anything really important, trust me.
I may fail at this. I may be too addicted to forgo this constant rush of news and vindication and anger and all the rest that my RSS feeds have pumped into me intravenously for so long. This is only day seven after all of that unplugging for me (moved all my news feeds to the bottom right column on my yahoo homepage so that I can still see the weather and email). Those dangerous news (RSS) feeds are sitting there just off screen. I can always drag the mouse downwards a little and bathe in their artificial vapid light. I assume I will occasionally.
Just unplug. Just be human again. Just be uncurated and unafraid and un-cruel. Just breathe.
