After a thirty-year study of time diaries, two sociologists found that Americans were actually working fewer hours than we did in the 1960s, but we feel as if we’re working more. We have the sense, too often, of running at top speed and never being able to catch up. With machines coming to seem part of our nervous systems, while increasing their speed every season, we’ve lost our Sundays, our weekends, our nights off— our holy days, as some would have it; our bosses, junk mailers, our parents can find us wherever we are, at any time of day or night. More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk. As I came down from the mountain, I recalled how, not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize.
~ Pico Iyer, “The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere.” (Simon & Schuster/ TED, November 4, 2014)
Image Source: Journalofanobody
Choices. We can allow ourselves to be assaulted with info and feelings of impotence 24/7, or we can realize that we are assuming a false sense of self-importance in it all and luxuriate in the knowledge that we can in fact, back off. And. the. world. will. still. turn.
Yes. And we’ll be spinning with it.
Indeed…they don’t call me ‘dizzy’ for nothin’ you know..
Ah breathe in and out slowly and remember to stop spinning and relax you two!! ha
And Coach arrives! (Just in the nick of time)
If we could only find a cure for FOMO (fear of missing out).
FOMO. Hmmmm. New acronym for me. Don’t like it. 🙂
Me, either.
The recent Thanksgiving storm here in the Northeast rendered me without Internet access for three days. At first, I felt a bit ‘edgy’ and lost, and then I felt, well, free. 🙂 Mimi is so, so right–none of us is indispensable, and ‘unplugging’ more frequently will not cause bodily harm. As Carolann so astutely observes, we need to shake off that ole’ FOMO.
I/we noticed your absence. You were lost, absent – and I fell into an abyss as a result.
This is what’s known in my trade as hyperbole, but bless you anyway, DK! 😀
Smiling.
Like Ted Iyer says, many of us feel the overwhelm and say it’s the world spinning faster. Most of us don’t want to admit that as we age (did I use that word?!) our perception is slower.
All the more reason to try a little stillness and notice more of what’s going on. It’ll make our lives richer.
Thanks,
Vincent
Yes. I was nodding (and nodding aggressively with “did I use that word”. Thanks for sharing Vincent.
It’s striking to me, the inverse I notice in his observation from days gone by – to now…the once sought after commodities of movement and information and how now, we need, seek…crave…the inverse of that.
Yes. Full stop.
Spot on, David.
I really believe that the faster the world communicates and interacts, the more we will find ourselves spinning … so we must make a conscious choice to slow down and hit the re-set button 🙂
We weren’t designed for constant action, interaction and thinking!
Yes. Period.
Old is GOLD.
Look at you rattling off the magic so early in the morning.
I love having time to occassionally slow down and disconnect 🙂
Yes Becca. (BTW, love your handle. “God Made Dirt.” Genius.)