Grains in the Hourglass

When was the last time you simply sat with yourself? I’m old enough to remember when that was just common life. In fact, in my younger days, people still left magazines and old paperbacks in the bathroom to pass the time while you took care of business. These days, those old dusty stacks are harder to come by. Kind of like the public pay phone. Some concepts simply become obsolete. Sitting with yourself falls under that category; a relic of simpler times gone by.

Following my decision to delete all social media apps off my phone on Christmas day of last year, I have accidentally rediscovered the concept of sitting with myself. Now I won’t pretend to be a technological ascetic; I still have a smartphone and continue to listen to podcasts, audiobooks and music. However the countless hours passively squandered on aimless scrolling? That’s all been eliminated. I can’t tell you, until you experience it yourself, how profound the withdrawals are; the incessant need to pick up your phone and stare at something. However even this habit can be eliminated with time.

Now, more often than not, I simply sit with myself. I’ve rediscovered the sounds of life. The sounds of nature and society that surround me. I’ve awakened to the subtle hue changes of the sky and lengthening shadows in the afternoon. I’m more sensitive to the light flurries of the breeze. I’ve seen the world is still here; tirelessly waiting for our attention. For us to unglue ourselves from these tiny, hypnotic tyrants we call ‘screens.’ Again, I’m not an ascetic. I still do quite a bit of streaming, perhaps even more than before, since I have suddenly freed up so much time.

I find I have not lost track of the happenings in the world. If anything, I’m more finely attuned with current events because now I take in the news through carefully curated, professional channels. Versus the mindless spamming of thousands of strangers in a vast sea of disorganized opinions. Now I consciously choose whose writing I want to consume. Whose news or podcast I listen to; with sources I know and trust. And increasingly, throughout the day, I simply enjoy quietude and silence.

It’s not easy to sit with yourself. You’re quite literally forced to face your demons. Perhaps my age has something to do with it. At 42 I increasingly reminisce about my past and more deeply meditate on the future. It’s quite literally middle age. Twenty-five years ago I was just a kid. Twenty-five years from now, should God bless me to live that long (and hopefully much longer still), I will be a veritable senior citizen. And so I ask, where is my time going? To what do I devote my energy? My money? My attention? These precious moments we squander away as if we had an unlimited supply?

Of course the flipside of that coin can be summed up by the Costarican adage, “hay más tiempo que vida!” There is more time than life. Meaning, we have many more empty moments than we know what to do with. Stated another way, there is enough time to be bored. Therefore, why not aimlessly scroll 7 minutes here, 23 minutes there? Seventeen hours of dead weight over the course of a week? With each passing impression your mind chemistry changes ever so slightly. But like weightless grains of sand gathered in a large bucket, the gravity of their impact is brutal when summed up together.

And so we think, “Man, the world really is messed up. This is definitely the end.” And then as if on queue, you’ll come across a post from an evangelical preacher signaling the war in the middle east and encroaching CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) as the Mark of the Beast, without which there will be neither buying or selling. Suddenly, you have just a few less reasons to get out of bed in the morning. What’s the point? It’s all going to hell in a handbasket, then might as well binge watch some Netflix and wait for them to cut off the electricity.

I actually saw a YouTube influencer sell a 3 months’ supply of non-perishable foodstuffs in preparation for the ensuing Apocalypse. Ironically enough, this doesn’t mean the world isn’t messed up. There is overwhelming evidence for this everywhere. The government has failed us. All politicians failed us. There seems to be no authority we can trust. The policing agencies in finance and immigration, the “adults in the room,” are either absent, drunk or corrupt. The wolf watches over the chicken coop. Pigs are running the Animal Farm.

However, if I look at my life granularly, it is blue skies and easy sailing. Perhaps thanks to slow, sober and well timed decisions over the course of 13 years of married life, I have come to a certain plateau where I can enjoy the vistas and feast on the fruit of hard labors. Perhaps calmly sitting with yourself is a status that must be earned the old fashioned way. It just may be a flex (like me preteen son likes to say) of someone that has been to enough rodeos to know they can safely sit the next one out, blissfully free of FOMO. Maybe I am beneficiary of a school of philosophy that has largely been forgotten and trodden underfoot by the new class of social media addicted generations.

The point is, my friends, that if it’s not too late for you, give yourself permission to unplug and unwind more often than you do. I’m not even suggesting you should read more, or listen to good books. Retake the science of sitting with yourself in peace and quiet. Rediscover the ancient art of entertaining your own thoughts. Build up your threshold for boredom. It’s sobering to simply walk the dog without noise and uncover the starry night skies. There is wonder and magic in the world. Fire your taskmaster apps. This may come as a shocking surprise, but the people jockeying for your time on social media tend not to be thoughtful and insightful philosophers. More often than not, they are simply ringing alarm bells for attention while your life quietly slips away like grains in the hourglass.