Behind a Screen

Mea Culpa.

For a week, I’d been planning to publish an essay on something completely unrelated to what I write here today. However, a few days ago, my life changed through the act of deletion.

A simple act, certainly, but nonetheless impactful. I deleted the Instagram and Twitter apps from my phone earlier this week and I vowed to stay off social media for at least a week to see how it was affecting my life.

I can't formulate the words to describe how much better I feel. 

I have more focus. I am so relaxed. I feel at peace. 

In fact, I'm contemplating just deleting my account and never going back. Sure, I'll miss the latest news, but the news was always scandal or tragedy---which had me anxious, upset, and on edge at times. I figure I can look at the news on a need to know basis---because it will always be there. Upholding a regime this corrupt and evil requires that the lies to prop it up permeate every potential quiet space in your life. It is the only way that tyranny can survive----constantly lying to validate more lies.  

If I leave, I will miss the only Catholics I had contact with on a daily basis, but even the Catholic Twitter community is often fraught with scandal or controversies about the faith and sadly, at times, seems a contest to see who can be the most virtuous or humble....completely obliterating real virtue. 

Honestly though, those few instances aside, I have met some wonderful people through Twitter, I admit it. I have received so many kind words and gestures from many people who simply knew me through words on a screen...and in fact, this means so much to me. Above all, this would be the primary reason to remain on social media. Because, unlike the way in which media portrays human beings to incite fear and increase the power of tyrants through division, most human beings in my experience all want the same things in life. We just have different ideas on how to get there. 

We all want love and acceptance. We want to live our lives with few impediments to fulfill our dreams. No matter what we are told, we must remember that God created all of us and we are human "beings" and we have inherent dignity as humans because we simply "are"---our "being" matters. 

In my assessment, I think social media isolates people physically from one another and is primarily a data collection operation. It is addictive---and it is far from social. It encapsulates all of the bad qualities of the modern world---a man-made creation that facilitates the process of taking out frustration on those people whose faces you will never truly see— in order to distract you from the chaos and technocratic prison being built around you by the people who are the true source of your frustration.

Unfortunately, by isolating you physically from the world by a screen, it robs you of the faces that you really would see if you weren't staring at a screen---and robs you of the social interactions that are so key to happiness. 

In fact, I never miss Twitter after being detached for a few days. Sadly, when I am logged in I find it impossible to regulate how much I use it. I am sad and ashamed that some days I sat for hours--- just staring at my phone----oblivious to the world around me. Moments I will never get back.

How many times did I miss looking into my children's eyes? How many wonderful things did they try to tell me and I never heard them? 

How many evenings did I miss the waning orange-pink glow of a sunset? How many times did I fail to do something---or fail to see the beauty in front of me because I was drowning in a sea of outrage online? 

I will never know. 

Those moments are lost. 

I haven't made a final decision to totally leave social media---I think I'll just take it day by day. If I do return, I will need to regulate how much time I spend behind the screen.

Now it seems I have the time and attention to fully contemplate what I will allow in my life. 

God bless you and your loved ones.

~Rae