Tag Archives: Isolation

Unplugged: Connectivity and Connection

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One of my favorite assignments to give to my college students is a 24-hour media fast.  I ask them to refrain from using technology (their computers, cell phones and televisions) for 24 hours.  I ask them to disconnect from their devices and connect to their inner selves.  I ask them to put down social media and embrace social interaction.  And then, I ask them to write about their experiences.

I have been giving the assignment for many years, and each year it gets harder for my students.  For my student born in the digital age, the cell phone has become an extension of their bodies and their identities.  The internet, with its infinite information and endless opportunities for distraction, is always available to them.  They are in constant contact with friends and family, and yet they are oddly isolated, terrified of being alone.

I always find the papers deeply moving.  For most of my students, the experience is difficult and eye opening.  They come to appreciate the many ways that technology facilitates their lives and many of them begin to see the ways in which the same technology may be a hindrance to a more meaningful life.

Freed from their cell phones, they notice their surroundings more.  They have to find ways of entertaining themselves without a screen.  They have meaningful conversations with the people in front of them and discover that it is frustrating to have a conversation with someone who is simultaneously texting other people. They learn that talking to a stranger in line at the market need not be terrifying and that there are many different sounds in a city- not just the wailing of sirens.

Beyond the noises of the city, they begin to hear other things.  They experience silence.  And it scares them.  Many of my students discover that when they are silent, they can hear their own thoughts and get in touch with their own emotions.  They write to me about feeling overwhelmed by sadness and loneliness and fighting the urge to turn on their devices to distract them from the pain.

But for those students who are able to resist the pull of technological morphine, they discover something important.  They find that they can make it through the pain.  They discover catharsis in feeling something deeply and authentically.  They discover that the pain passes and that happiness and calm follow.  They get in touch with their own humanity.

Despite gaining insight from the experience, my students tell me they will never really be able to attain those feelings again. Without the outside pressure of the assignment, they doubt their own ability to go technology free.  They are struck by the realization that even if they chose to limit their own use of media, they would still find themselves immersed in a culture that demands electronic inter-connectivity.  They know that their friends will all be texting and updating status reports during conversations.  My assignment opens them up to new insights, and yet they feel powerless to do anything with their new-found knowledge.

Completely unplugging may not be an option, but I do offer my students some suggestions.

  1. Set aside time every day to be media free. During this time, avoid multi-tasking. Read a book.  Sit quietly and think or meditate.  Go for a walk.  For 30 minutes, be fully present in an endeavor.
  2. Make a deal with friends or family to turn off cell phones during meals.  Use meal times to interact and converse with the people in front of you. You can text and respond to social media and email later.
  3. Figure out which apps you use the most on your phone (usually social media such as Facebook or Instagram), and move them into a separate folder. By making it slightly more difficult to access the apps, you will be less likely to mindlessly turn to them.
  4. Turn off notifications on some of your applications. We are inundated by the sounds of our phones- from social media to texts, our phone are always buzzing, dinging and vibrating. We become like Pavlov’s dogs, conditioned to respond to the sound of the phone.  Turn off notifications and limit the number of times you check your applications a day.

Gone are the days when we could imagine a life completely media free.  To live in the modern economy requires an engagement with technology.  However, we can set the terms by which we engage.  We can decide to use our tools and not be used by them.

If my students (and others) are able to unplug from their devices for just a little time each day, they will find more room in their lives. Less concerned with wireless connectivity, they may actually find connection.

Fighting the Zombie Apocalypse

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This weekend I went to the see the newest X-Men movie (X-Men: Days of Future Past) and after sitting through endless previews for depressing action movies and the dark vision of the film itself, I found myself feeling pretty hopeless. Our entertainment environment is filled right now with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imagery. We conjure flawed super heroes to fight cunning and powerful villains or watch the “everyman” fight off a zombie mob. You might say “it’s just the movies (or TV),” but the truth is that our entertainment feeds and expands upon our fears.

Our ultra-violent and dark popular culture speaks to and from our collective anxiety. A jobless economic recovery, a world overrun with war, shooting sprees that leave children and young people massacred, a government that spies on its enemies and citizens alike, corporate cultures that demand long hours with increasing job instability- all of these conspire to make us feel vulnerable. Our entertainment is filled with stories of heroes (either super or home-grown) who are able to survive and conquer these forces. We turn to fiction for heroes because they seem so elusive in our own lives.

There is no better distillation of this fear than the zombies who inhabit our entertainment- from The Walking Dead to World War Z to any number of video games. Zombies are people who have ceased to be human. They are unstoppable mindless drones who have the ability to turn healthy independent people into the shuffling undead.

Zombie movies are a fun house mirror of our fears- that our world has spun out of control and that we are being turned into zombies. Schools prepare our students to be good workers and work demands that we surrender our autonomy and creativity and become mindless drones. We fear that we and those around us are becoming zombies. We fear that we have become the shuffling undead.

In popular culture the only way to resist the zombie horde is to resort to hiding and violence. The siege mentality of zombie films is again a mirror of our own mentality- looking out only for ourselves, pitted against our neighbors and friends for scarce resources- fighting over the division of the pie and not attempting to make the pie bigger.

Our zombie entertainment reflects our fears. But we have choices. We can, of course, surrender and become zombies ourselves or we can resist. But we do not need to resist as our entertainment counterparts do- by building fortresses and stockpiling weapons. Rather the way that we can fight is by becoming more intensely human.

We can reach out to our neighbors and to strangers with kindness and not suspicion. We can seek out moments of connection with one another. We can stop and appreciate the arts- by listening to music, reading a book or creating something (paintings, sculptures, collages- whatever!). We can stroll calmly and slowly out in nature. We can turn off our cell phones when we come home and make the office wait until tomorrow. We can insist on our own humanity and we can resist fear.

It is not easy. Zombies have captured our imaginations because we live in dangerous and uncertain times. But if zombies are the undead, we must fight them and what they represent by becoming more fully alive.

Life Lessons From Dr. Seuss: Helping Horton Hatch the Egg

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One of my favorite books is Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Suess. It is the story of Horton the Elephant who sits faithfully on a bird’s nest in a tree for fifty-one weeks after he promises the mother that he will babysit the egg. The egg, abandoned by its mother, eventually hatches into an “elephant bird” (read the book- I am not doing it justice!).

It is a book about the transformative power of love as well as loyalty and responsibility.
It is also a wish. After Horton hatches this amazing creature, the reader is told “and it should be, it should, it should be like that! Because Horton was faithful! He sat and he sat! He meant what he said…And he said what he meant…And they sent him home happy, One hundred per cent!”   We all want to believe that our hard work will be rewarded; That all the blood, sweat, and tears that we pour into our careers, our relationships, and our children will pay off and that we will be one hundred percent happy.

And perhaps it should be like that. But all too often it isn’t. Even the happiness from a great victory can be short lived. I often imagine that the elephant bird goes back home with Horton and is teased because he is different or that even if not teased by others, he himself feels isolated and alone. I imagine that Horton, the dedicated father he has become, stays up late at night worrying about his child’s future. I imagine that Horton’s happiness does not stay at 100% for very long.

What do we do when life does not reward us as we would like or even as we deserve? How do we rise to the next challenge? Part of the answer is actually the first part of Horton Hatches the Egg. Horton shows up. He takes on responsibilities and plugs away even when it is hard. As they say, 90% of success is just showing up.

But another part of the answer is sadly absent from Horton’s tale. Horton sits on the egg alone for 51 weeks. He never asks for help. Perhaps Horton fears that others will not be willing. Perhaps he feels that no one else could do it as well as he does. Perhaps he feels that he will not be living up to his word if he takes even a short break to stretch his legs and see his friends.

Horton makes the mistake that so many of us make- believing that there is only one right way to do things and that only he is capable of doing it. Sometimes the best way to show up is to know when you need a break. Sometimes it’s about delegating. Sometimes it’s about connecting with others who are dealing with similar issues and learning from them. Sometimes showing up means getting help to view things from a different perspective.

Through his love, devotion and dedication to being there, Horton helps to create something beautiful and special. We are all, in our own ways, capable of being Horton. But we shouldn’t have to do it alone.

The Storms of Life

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As another winter storm bears down on New England, I engage in my pre-storm ritual: obsessively reading weather reports and blogs.  I love weather.  I love storm watching. I feel (despite much evidence to the contrary) that if I read everything I will know what the future holds. I will be able to predict what will happen and where. I will be prepared.

Of course, I am not. Meteorology may be a science but it is clearly not an exact one. Every storm teaches me that the future is unknowable, and therefore uncontrollable. My constant reading aside, the weather will do what it plans to do. Rain/snow lines will shift, low pressure systems will unexpectedly move in and my day will be affected in ways I hadn’t planned.

In short, the weather is just another area of my life over which I have very little control. The career I planned in my twenties is very different than the one I have now. The marriage I imagined as a child bears little resemblance to the one in which I happily find myself. The beautiful children I have today are very different than the ones I daydreamed about as I held my hand over my swollen belly all those years ago. What happened? Life.

All the preparation in the world, all the good advice, all the self-help and parenting books, could not prepare me for the ways that life intervened. I could not have predicted the ways that love, economics, ambition, violence and illness would affect the trajectory of my life.  All the reading and planning could not have prepared me for the ways in which life would alter and change me- shifting priorities, values and beliefs.

Control is an illusion.What mattered more along the way was knowing myself and being open to learning more.When life challenged me, my willingness to adjust, go with the flow and when needed, set limits, allowed me to grow as a person- to not only survive, but thrive.

We focus a lot in our society on being prepared. And preparation is important. Too often though, we focus on the wrong kind of preparation. We prepare for life’s storms never realizing that forecasts change and that the storm we prepared for is seldom the storm that arrives. We cling to dogma and ideas about the way things should be instead of looking within to build strength to find our own truths.

What I have learned is that flexibility and humility are my lifelines; knowing what I can and cannot control and learning to ask for help when I am tossed in the waves of life’s hurricanes.

I suppose that I like to watch storms because it provides me with an illusion of control. But I know now it is an illusion. I know that I can no more control the storms of my life than the storms in the Gulf Stream. But with the weather I can pretend. So, today I’ll buy the loaf of bread and the gallon of milk and enjoy watching the storm, if and when it hits.

The Pros and Cons of the Curated Life

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As a Communication professor, I often give my students an assignment that they have dubbed the “cyber stalking” assignment.  I ask them to choose a friend and find out as much as they can about that individual online.  I tell them to use a critical eye, as if they were a future employer.  What do they see? What are the implications of every photo, every comment, every update?  All of it communicates something about the individual.

After this assignment, my students are invariably shocked at the picture that has emerged and I then urge them to scrub their own digital presence (no more photos holding red plastic cups!).  I explain that the internet has become a log of our lives, an addendum to every cover letter and resume we send out, an attachment to every performance review at work.  I stress the importance of curating your online presence.

But lately I have begun to see the downside of a curated life.  All those students and friends who have taken to heart such warnings now present themselves well online.  They post beautifully constructed facades of vacations, achievements, happy accomplished children and the results are, well, isolating.

For many of us with friends scattered around the country and the world, social networking sites (and even the holiday newsletter) are the primary way that we learn about each other’s lives.  But what we learn from the curated life is only half the story.

The child who starred in the dance recital or won MVP in little league or came in first at the spelling bee, also has meltdowns over homework, suffers from anxiety attacks, talks back and slams doors, is bullied or is a bully. The friend with the great promotion works 80 hour weeks and hasn’t seen her friends or spouse for dinner in 6 months.  The college friend who always looks so cheerful in her photos is deeply depressed over losing her job, but is too ashamed to post it.   But to read the updates you would never know.

The result of this is that it makes it harder for everyone to talk honestly about the meltdowns, anxiety attacks, conflicts, bullying, the challenges of working, living, and parenting.  The result is that we are all left alone to cope.  Coping is especially hard when we believe we are the only ones.

The curated life turns each of us into our own PR agents.  We may look great on the screen, but the process leaves us little room to be real.

The answer may not be to stop curating, but to pick up the phone, or better yet, meet in person.  Call a friend and tell them what’s really going on.  When you are with others, be real about what is going on in your home.  More often than not, the other person will feel relieved and open up about their challenges as well.