A Life We Are Tuned Into and Turned On By

Auf Deutsch: Ein Leben, das uns berührt und antörnt

It all started with our Sensual Summer Break social media detox last week. It was - of course - delicious, and liberating, and nourishing. And it also served as a reminder to me the myriad of ways I’m held in the grip of society’s hustle in my day-to-day. Because why do I need a week of deleting most of my apps and leaving my phone at home to feel nourished, and calm, and tuned into my bodily needs?

Without over-romanticising ‘what used to be’ or demonising ‘what is’, there’s no mistake that in today’s world there’s so much external noise. Distractions are everywhere, and we often don’t even realise we’re sucked into them, simply because we don’t know any different anymore. No wonder there’s a huge surge in nostalgia for the 80s and 90s - for analog living. Equally, throwing your phone out of the nearest window isn’t necessarily the solution either (albeit probably incredibly cathartic, lol). The reality is, the digital world is here, and that’s the whole reason you’re even reading these words I’ve written. It’s not all bad, right? Where it gets tricky is our immediate reliance on it - not just for banking, transportation and work, but for our perceived sense of connection and happiness. Can you relate?

And then, why, I ask myself, do I feel such a sense of relief when I disconnect from the online noise & external hustle of life? If it’s the provider of my contentment, why do I feel such a contempt towards it? Surely they can’t go hand in hand?

**Okay, let’s zoom out a little.** When I speak of external and online noise, what I mean is not just the social media apps locking in our short attention span (but my oh my can we stay on these apps for a long time!), but also the undercurrent of constantly having to improve, be up-to-date with the latest trends, move up on the career ladder, find a partner, have children, be outwardly successful in every nook and cranny of your life. It’s even exhausting writing this down, let alone try and live up to all of those external expectations. Oftentimes, no one has actually told us we need to aspire to these things. We simply have understood from a young age that’s the expectation in our lifetime. **We have learned and internalised society’s rules and demands since before we were able to consciously understand them**, let alone ask ourselves if that is what we want as individuals.

The effects of this hustle culture are sometimes hidden, or subconscious, or painful. It means that some of us get our Eat, Pray, Love moment at some point in life: waking up and realising that the life you’re living isn’t yours, and being unsure of what that would even look and feel like. It also sometimes means that you find yourself so far up a ladder (be it corporate or otherwise) that looking down makes you feel dizzy: the alternative of choosing the unknown seemingly more scary than staying right where you are, even if that’s just as exerting. And sometimes, it means breaking generation’s worth of belief system that life is meant to be lived a certain way - and being the first to be brave enough (or have enough capacity) to ask yourself why.

I think this is partially the reason, too, that we get sucked into social media so badly. Not just because it re-iterates messaging of how life should be lived (and look aesthetically pleasing whilst we’re at it), but also because it numbs us from having to ask the hard questions. The apps on our phone are literally programmed to keep us hooked, and the effect of all those external opinions, and ads, and advice, and hacks, and whatever-else-we-consume, encapsulated in little 10-20 second bursts of information, will leave us feeling over-stimulated, not good-enough, and overall pretty zoned out and numbed from the overload of information.

I always notice this when I’m having a particularly stressful day. I enter the online scroll and come to find hints of dopamine, and stay for the endless distraction that these platforms provide, so that my brain doesn’t have to deal with the real, tangible world and what it’s asking of me. It means I don’t have to ask the difficult questions, or do the difficult thing - even if it’s as simple as saying no to someone over text or researching tax returns (I mean, of course I’d rather look at little ducks in a pond on someone else’s Instagram rather than do that!). But what it also means, as an effect, is that by avoiding life and how it may affect me, I’m frazzling my nervous system just as much (no, probably even more) by adding all that external noise on top of my already existing imbalance.

So, the question that I really, then, want to ask myself is: **What would I be doing if there wasn’t a scroll to transfix onto?** And that answer is pretty revealing. What if I would be looking up at the world rather than looking down at that blue light rectangle that’s often glued to my hand? What would I see then? How would life be *then*? Because where that rectangle is showing me all the ways I need to do more, look better, be happier, and buy all-the-things to get there, looking up at the world, and around it, shows me the beauty of what already is. Of the present moment. **Me numbing out with that strange little rectangle that holds *so much power* over pretty much all of us, means I don’t live in the present anymore.** It means I live in the past - seeing other people doing so many cool things and feeling like I should’ve been there too - or in the future - figuring out all the ways in which I fall short and how much better I will be when I do/have/feel X, Y or Z in the imagined future.

What would I be doing if I didn’t have a scroll to transfix onto? What would I be feeling, thinking, dreaming of? What if my system would be like a blank slate, not clouded by external opinions or noise or an overstimulated nervous system, but spacious and relaxed and open to receiving inspiration from the most unexpected things, simply because I’m there, fully there, in the present moment?

Interestingly, I kind of have an answer to this question, because I got to live it once. A couple of years ago, I went to a silent retreat tucked away somewhere in the rice paddies of Bali and spend a couple of days not speaking to anyone, not having my phone, or any other technology at hand for that matter, surrounded by nature and books and my journal and… my thoughts. It wasn’t a Vipassana (where you spent the majority of your days practicing a particular meditation style), all the meditation and Yoga that was being offered was optional. There was an amazing buffet three times a day, hammocks to lounge in and… well, that was pretty much it. Other than that, just utter silence. I’d share the occasional smile with someone next in line for the oatmeal in the morning, but other than that, it was me in my silent cocoon with my thoughts raging wild (at first) and many naps in the hammock (when I was finally able to sink into the relaxation). There was quite literally no distraction from myself, and even though it was also confronting, it was the most liberated and connected I’d felt in a long time. I even noticed the shape of my eyes change every so slightly. Was it from the lack of screens? The sleep? My gaze turned more inwards? Who knows, but it shifted something inside me. It showed me that it was safe to journey within, to be with myself (and just myself) and all the thoughts and feelings I would have from one moment to the next. In fact, it showed me that I really enjoyed my own company, and that when I offered myself the space, the most exciting creative ideas would come through.

And of course, even before going into the silent retreat, I kind of knew that in order to feel connected to myself and my creativity, I would have to have some boundaries around what I would let in from the external world. But to feel happy, and content, without having anything else other than my journal and a borrowed book? It sounds so simple, and of course, it is. I wouldn’t want to live my life as a recluse - I’m too much of a yapper and oversharer for that (lol), and I also truly believe that life is much more meaningful when shared. But what that experience in Bali taught me, is that a level of silence from the external world is absolutely necessary to feel relaxed, connected and inspired.

Elizabeth Gilbert has a famous quote I keep coming back to: ‘The most relaxed person in the room holds all the power’. I once went to a talk by her (which was fab, of course) where she elaborated on this by saying that women are often celebrated for being brave, and bad-ass, and that whole ‘nice girls don’t get the corner office’ type of narrative, but that true, inner power is often derived from knowing you have nothing to prove, to no one. To not feel anxiety to get to the next thing, or that you’re doing something wrong, or a sense of urgency, or pressure to be a certain way - but to be leaning back so far all you can see is the delicious blue from the sky (preferably from a hammock - I mean, I’m speaking metaphorically here, but you get the picture).

We have forgotten how to do this. How to be relaxed. How to catch our breath. How to live life, simply for the joys of it. We have become so distracted - not through any fault of our own, mind - by our little blue rectangles and all the messaging that comes with them, that we are in these constant loops and cycles of proving things to people we don’t even know.

So, that is how I arrived at this summer’s online detox. I felt a sense of urgency rushing through my veins, not even knowing where it was coming from. It was just there. On the Monday of our detox, I closed my apps, put timers on things I knew I’d need for a couple of minutes a day, clipped the lead of my dog on her harness, and headed outside. Gaze up, to the delicious blue of the sky. Gaze inwards, to that turmoil that was missing out on the scroll. I took a deep breath, and felt a sense of space seeping into my bones.

So many of us - myself included - spend many days feeling checked out of our lives as we check in with the lives of others. What would happen when we check out of that other thing, that rectangle in our hands, and check in with ourselves? What would happen if we give ourselves the gift of relaxation from external noise and learning to see that true connection and happiness doesn’t come from your next purchase or Instagram like - but from life lived, and touched, and felt, right as it is happening, in the tangible now? What then?