“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I usually think of myself as having “a life,” which sounds like one big thing, a summation, held at a slight intellectual distance. Thoreau’s wording makes me think differently. “Life” is more immediate, intimate, constantly flowing through me. If “life” is a medium of exchange, then it can be spent well or poorly. It can be wasted.
In Walden, Thoreau asked us to reconsider what was important. He saw that the house, the furnishings, the clothes, the gadgets, the status items, were all accoutrements that missed the point. Their hidden cost locked people into a cycle of work and consumption that did not enrich their lives. The cost was not just in dollars, but in loss of the essence of themselves, a loss of the value of the force he called “life.”
Thoreau’s insights are true today. We still waste time, energy, and essence on physical luxuries that detract from our well-being. And I think there is a more tragic loss that has accrued in modern society: the loss of our attention. Just as we are invited to over consume material goods, we are also constantly offered an overconsumption of stimulation, information, entertainment, and other demands on our attention. We have a limited budget of attention, and if we spend it on social media, or streaming services, or news, or digital scrolling, we degrade our capacity to pay attention and process information. Thoreau would say these voracious demands sap the life from us.
One simple remedy is to take digital vacations, for an hour, a day, or a week, where we limit or eliminate our contact with social media, news, and the internet. We can take pleasure in analog activities like reading, exercise, walks in nature, cooking a meal, engaging in conversation with friends, or relaxing in a hammock to daydream. These recharge our capacities, clear the buffer, and reduce our reactivity.
In practice, this can feel difficult, even impossible. The lure of our devices can acquire the power of an addictive drug. If I spend an hour away from my phone or computer, I start looking for an excuse to pick it up. More than the need to accomplish a task (a ready excuse), it is a misguided search for relief from a creeping anxiety I feel. But I don’t get relief. The device delivers more stimulation, excites another round of anxiety, and the cycle continues.
The spot to work with reducing our digital interaction is when we feel the urge to reach for the device, but before we pick it up. That is the fertile moment. See if you can refuse for a minute, two minutes, five minutes. See if the urge will pass.
Our nervous systems were not meant to handle constant stimulation. For all its benefits, I am coming to believe that every minute I spend in digitopia (hmm, an exaggeration, but I like the word) includes a slow, dripping cost that depletes my humanity. Time spent in the analog world (isn’t that what we used to call reality?) allows me to reorient and replenish.
I am trying to right the balance between the two.
Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash