To connect, you’ve got to disconnect

I say it, you say it, and we know it’s true—we need to turn off our devices and spend time in the real world. We get so disconnected from the Earth and our lives. We live in a virtual reality. What we think of as reality is an elixir of lies that has drugged us into thinking our lives are authentic. We are hypnotized. We have become slaves to self-imposed fictions. We are dead or dying inside.

How long has it been since you turned off your phone, left it at home, and went for a walk? No radio, no ear pods, no screens. Just a walk outside with awareness of everything going on around you. How long?

How long has it been since you went to a park where you could sit down on a bench or chair and observe people, listen to snatches of their conversation? Or conversely, how long as it been since you sat in your yard or in a field and just listened to and looked at nature? How long has it been since you sat down with friends and family and talked without devices around, really listened to each other without multi-tasking?

If it’s been a while, you need to do so. There’s peace of mind in it. There’s the slowing down in it.

This week, I met a family who dropped out, got their two sons, and took off on a trip across America (my story about it is in today’s paper). They wanted to slow down life and reconnect to the world around them. They inspired me. After I interviewed them, I left feeling warmth in my heart. I wanted to drop everything and join them. I wanted to throw all of my devices in the garbage bin and run.

We live in an age of information overload. I’m a hypocrite—right now I’m giving you even more information. I read the New York Times’s and the BBC’s web pages every day. I listen to the radio. While I eat dinner, I stream some show. Every day, I write stories designed to inform or entertain you. We at the State Gazette try really hard to connect you to our community and without stoking the fires of divisiveness. But even a benevolent news source doesn’t need to be a constant distraction.

But I tell you now: right after you read this, fold up the paper or get offline and go outside. Feel the heat or feel the cold. There’s peace in that too.

We’re in the middle of a heavy, hate-filled election season. Turn off FOX, turn off CNN and MSNBC, get off Facebook and X. Stop stoking the bitterness in your heart with a red hot poker of anger and hatred.

There’s life beyond these things we think are so important.

Oh, I love my online life. I use social media as an outlet for my sense of humor, as a venue for my music, photography, and as a document of my life with kids and animals. I go to bed at night, and I scroll scroll scroll through a million things online. But I’ve decided to stop that and read or just think. Online life is grand, but it’s soul-draining.

I’ve always loved the William Wordsworth poem in which he takes a break from the city life and sees “a host of daffodils.” Back in daily life, when everything gets back to the buzz of normality, he thinks of being in nature, and that gives him peace.

Wordsworth wrote that when he gets home, he lies down, and:

[Memories of the flowers]

flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

We need a refueling of spirit that only a connection with nature and each other can give us [and your god if you’re religious]. Talk to each other about real things in your life. Listen to others about real things in their lives. Sit down and observe the world around you. Get out in it.

Come, let’s gather on my porch and talk and listen and look at the sky and the trees and each other. Let’s rediscover in ourselves the human beings that we are. Let’s rediscover the human beings our loved ones and friends are. Let’s connect. Connect.