News item: 25% of young adults say that they are 'almost constantly' online.
Guess you have to do something before you get a job and you spend what seems to be that same amount of time at work.
Which leads to this: when your nose is pressed up against the display window of life, and you're staring at whatever is entrancing you, or if your 'nose is to the grindstone', which is the old saying about work, you're not looking around to see what else might be there and so time passes and next thing you know a day, a week, a month has gone by and "Whoa! It's November already!" you remark, as if you'd just realized something, which you have, and that is that other things have happened while you were away.
It's at about this time that 'time out' needs to be called, but if you're not ready for it then by all means continue what you're doing but for the others there are things called weekends and vacations and even longer term things like sabbaticals and retreats.
It's good to get away from it all for awhile because in doing so, you make room for your thoughts to come in again instead of being continuously awash in somebody else's. You actually spend some time with just yourself. Rediscovering what that is.
I've done this enough times to recognize that for the first couple of days I'm going to continue to run on momentum, and then that will cease. What comes next is restlessness and some boredom, which is hard to get through, but the payoff is some sort of extended vision quest period where I break through and enter a state of being that seems familiar, peaceful, and very comfortable. I call this breakthrough point 'arriving at yourself'.
In this place, space, or state of mind, whatever it is, you get in touch with deeper aspects of yourself, reflect on where you've been, ask yourself what you want to do next, visualize your future, play with concepts and ideas, do research on subjects that interest you, explore possibilities, and fully rest for periods of time- which may be short or long- into states of non-thinking (which creates space for new thinking, interestingly enough). All sorts of treasure awaits.
You're just not going to get this sort of thing after pulling a shift at work, or setting aside your 'smart' phone for an hour. You have to break the momentum of the mind, get off the fast track, pull off the information superhighway, unplug and unwind. It takes me days to do this, and all the reports I've heard from others say it takes about the same length of time for them.
Perhaps we need this 'checking out' time more than ever now. The pace of life is so rapid these days that if you're not overworking yourself physically it's highly likely that you're overworking yourself mentally. 98% of the people in the U.S. have cellphones, and around 75% get on the internet at least once a day. We are online a lot, there's no doubt about that.
He’s got the idea
Unsplash.com
It's hard to stay offline entirely anymore so what I've done on my latest retreat is I have selectively gotten onto the internet during my retreat time. I have avoided 'busy' sites and have researched, shall I say, 'calmer' web pages. Pages with less animation, sidebars, flashy graphics, videos, etc. Just the facts, please.
Seems to be working very well. Insights and ideas are occurring. Good stuff is coming to mind, ideas that are invigorating, expansive, and different. I'm in control of the content, rather than the content being in control of me, and I'm liking that.
Due to this, my attention can be fixated on rich subject matter for greater lengths of time. I have no tempting distractions in my peripheral vision that might break my concentration, and the volume on my computer is kept low or on mute. Likewise, potential home base ripples have been proactively neutralized, keeping me fully immersed in a contemplative state.
Sooner or later I will rejoin The World but until then I'm content to spend my retreat in this manner. Instead of it being Go time all the time, it's Chill time.
Does doing something like this sound good to you? If so, give a retreat a try. Customize your away time so it fits your preferences, and sink into some quiet time. It's bound to pay you dividends.