On a scale of 1 – 10, how distracted do you feel? Have you given any thought to how you spend your time? Like…really thought about it? Are you going about your minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years consciously? Intentionally? Or are you just…going with the flow of the life we end up living, prescribed by expectation and/or default?
It’s worth spending a few minutes really reflecting on where your time actually goes.
I feel like time is flying faster than I really want it to. My kid is growing so fast. It’s happening right before my eyes, + the moments are so fleeting it’s hard to capture them fully. I try to be present, mindful, aware, savour it all, + yet the clock tick tick ticks on…and now they’re ten, and now they care what friends think about their hair, and now, and now, and now…the summers I have left with this incredible human before they’re well and truly off and away creating their own life to live…the summers are dwindling, and it’s enough to break one’s heart.
And I swear to God, I will not allow myself to be distracted from any of it. But it’s hard, the world we live in is designed to keep us distracted.
We’re distracted by so much…;
- Social media
- Working 40+ hours a week
- News cycles that don’t really get to the heart of what’s happening in the world
- Celebrity culture
- Consumerism
- Fast fashion
- Cheap products
- Abundance of processed foods
- Products designed to break + fail + be replaced
- Influencers
- Extra curricular activities
- Entertaining our children
- Expectation of never ending comfort
- The Jones’, and how we keep up with them
We’re distracted to the point of exhaustion that we no longer see…;
- Our missing support network
- The joy and creativity wrought by boredom
- That discomfort reminds us of our humanity
- The impact on the global community by our consumption of goods
- Value in art and expression
- The necessity of dissension and disagreement
- How we’re all connected
I’m exhausted just thinking about it all…
The point being…how can we create a world where we can care about each other, be present for our loved ones, spend time in ways that really align with who we are and what we value, if we’re in a constant state of distraction and exhaustion? What kind of world am I leaving to my child?
I was talking about this with a friend recently [today, in fact], and she reminded me of the following;
“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
— The Internet, circa mid 2000’s or Unknown Monk, circa 1300 AD
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”
So what I’ll leave you with today is to consider the following. What can you change in your life or within yourself to be less distracted, less exhausted?
Not necessarily in the pursuit of some grand plan to change the world. Just your world. And as you change your world, and find yourself more present, intentional, conscious, aware of your life, with your loved ones, in how you’re living…perhaps the trickle down impact will be in how we show up for one another, how we care for one another, how we recognise each other’s humanity, whether in your neighbour across the street or those that live on the other side of the globe.
There’s a whole additional discussion about learning to sit with discomfort and grief. I do believe that in our western culture, we’ve become so addicted to distractions and comfort, that we avoid experiencing the opposite at all costs. But that will wait for another time.
If you haven’t already, read Brave New World or the Hunger Games [or any number of dystopian, post-apocolyptic novels of yore]…we’re eerily living those realities, and that alone should be enough to prompt change in how we exist in our day to day. But anyways…
For now…consider your distractions, the blank space in your calendar, where and how you spend your time, energy, and focus. And consider how it makes you feel. And if what you come up with is ‘busy’, ‘distracted’, ‘numb’, ‘disconnected’…perhaps it’s time to start looking at what you can do to change it up to be less busy, less distracted, more tuned in, more connected.