I snapped a picture of beautiful red roses blooming in the garden on just another ordinary day. Roses like these are hardy and have survived to bloom for years without any special care. The rose bush comes into glorious bloom for only a few days before its youthful flowers turn brown, so I wanted to capture the lush colors and radiant fullness by taking a photo.
I have to confess I leave my driveway many times over the course of the summer and look but rarely see the roses. I’m glad I had the mindfulness to seize the moment.
I’m finding more and more that colorful flowers and the natural things we often take for granted bring beauty and joy to the every day. Too bad we can’t tear ourselves away from a million other distractions, obligations and concerns to actually notice them.
I’ve heard it said we live in a “microwave society.” We want it now, we never want to wait. Whatever happened to the concept of stopping to smell the roses? That seems a bit retro and outmoded in this relentlessly digital age.
Technology has spoiled us; we are fast moving and industrialized. In the march of the machines many of us have become subtly addicted to electronic devices. I read an online poll that revealed some people would be more upset to lose their mobile phone than their wedding ring!
Maybe because I read and write about Jane Austen, I long for simpler times unburdened by rapidly changing technology. I remember a time many years ago when I was working my first real corporate job after college. I came home after work to sit on my balcony in the old Victorian house where I rented my first apartment. I felt like such a grownup!
I had no microwave; I had no air conditioning. I wasn’t a cook by any means so dinner often meant heating up a frozen chicken and mashed potato dinner in a hot oven on an even hotter night, to be eaten on my little balcony. This was years before personal computers, email, smartphones, tablets and notebooks. I was fully unplugged as the moon hung low in the night sky over my balcony and the crickets played a soundtrack for the little Norman Rockwell-like village I called home.
We are so much more advanced now, and life seems to hold so many possibilities with the new breakthroughs in technology that arrive every day, but I often find my heart aches with nostalgia for that simpler time. My eyes fill with tears thinking about its simplicity and its grace.
I would like to rewind to find the magic in those mundane, ordinary days. But of course, despite my misty nostalgia, you really can’t go back. All we really have to work with is here, in the NOW.
In the present, I reached a point where I felt a bit oppressed by technology, and the burden it creates. How it distracts from important things and separates us from the organic, natural world. In the old days, you could pick up a phone and call or hand write a note to let someone know you are thinking of them. In modern times, social media creates pressure to connect with everyone you’ve ever known who is somehow added to your network. If you don’t respond to an email or online update it affects friendships and then there is the overwhelming pressure to keep up with many different internet accounts at once.
Add to that the very adult pressures of making a living and keeping a freelance career afloat in a dismal economy, and you have the recipe for a whopping migraine headache, just like the one I experienced one week this summer during one of the worst heat waves in recent memory. I woke up one humid day with a pain in my neck and head that fit the pattern of a migraine; sure enough, by evening I felt an excruciating, throbbing pain localized behind my left eye.
Since it was around the Fourth of July holiday, I didn’t feel so guilty unplugging. After all, this was a vacation time, and didn’t I need a period of rest? I maintain an online presence as a writer and usually I’m itching to log on and check my accounts, look at my earnings and page views, but my severe headache made the thought of staring at a computer screen impossible.
So began my languid days of unplugging, which brought back those blissful summer memories of lazy days on my little balcony in Upstate New York, a period where I felt blissfully unburdened from the time pressures of technology. I napped. I emptied my mind. I felt something inside me release all the pent up tension of racing against an oppressive and much too ambitious To-Do List.
I also felt grateful simply to be alive.
You see, a few days earlier we had experienced the PERFECT STORM. This severe thunderstorm showed up without warning. It felt scarier and more violent than even the maelstrom that was Hurricane Irene.
As the surprise afternoon thunderstorm gathered force and speed that summer day, I felt terror rising within me. The news often spoke of tragic deaths and damage from these types of summer storms but the line of showers often went east and missed my area of the county.
But today it was here.
I looked out the window and I couldn’t see. Rain made visibility impossible and the hail beat the side of our house and the sound of the wind and force of this storm was sickening. I ran to gather my purse, cell phone, cat carriers and some important papers, all set to evacuate. As the violence reached a crescendo I heard a crash as the neighbor’s weeping willow tree came thudding down with great force...
My mind raced: If a tree comes down closer to the house will we be hurt or killed?
In my hysteria, a thousand thoughts hurtled through my mind. God let me get through this. Please protect my animals. Please will no one get hurt today? Please let me have my life.
Suddenly, ordinary life, on an ordinary day, just the mundane little stuff, seemed HUGELY appealing.
Then just as suddenly as it appeared, the storm was gone. We survived. But I felt somehow changed by the experience. I have been more compelled to appreciate the smaller ordinary moments we take for granted. I’ve been more mindful. I’ve been out photographing things that have meaning to me, taking it all in, capturing fleeting moments, with an awareness of how suddenly it could all be ripped away from me.
Time seems more precious, so I’m less likely to invest it in online pursuits. I have relished my time of unplugging. It did wonders for my headache! And it made me get in touch with my childhood...
The Joy of Unplugging
If you live in the country, turn off all the lights and look out a window. Chances are you’ll see the rural nightlife, truly experiencing the sights and sounds of nature. On the Fourth of July, I noticed a wall of fireflies lighting up the night in the wooded area that borders our property; that sweltering summer evening it felt more like the holidays as the fireflies glowed at dusk, illuminating the tall grass right up to the high trees with a dazzling array of what looked like hundreds of blinking Christmas tree lights.
I gazed on this glowy, radiant scene with a childlike sense of wonder. I hadn’t actually seen fireflies in years. It occurred to me, I’m probably missing a lot. The fireflies and other natural and manmade wonders of life have been here all along, it’s just me who drifted away from them. After all, I’m an adult now who’s dealing with very serious grownup things like the recession, and making a living and a lousy economy. I recall hearing as a young adult we must: “Give up the childish things of youth.”
But what if those childish things, which turned out to be very ordinary things like simple, innocent pleasures, are really the stuff of life and the keys to authentic happiness? That’s what I realized one ordinary July evening when I finally unplugged, discovered the magic wall of fireflies and recovered my childlike sense of wonder.
I vowed from that moment on to stop and smell the roses. Not to be so influenced by my adult peers and media and a culture that defines me by how much I spend, what car I drive, how quickly I respond to email and how fat is the size of my paycheck.
I vow to stay more connected to the natural world and in turn, to the voice of my soul. To those of you diving deep into your electronic devices after work, feverishly maintaining your online presence, afraid you’ll miss an update as the internet hurtles by at warp speed, I must say goodnight as I go offline to seek something more organic and natural.
I need balance. The only thing on my mind is what waits for me in the fields as the sun slides behind the trees and darkness descends on another summer night.
It feels really good to be in touch with that little girl within who wonders if there’ll be more fireflies tonight.
Soul Tripper Exercise:
Unplug from mobile devices and computers; take in the magic in an ordinary day. Do this for a day or long weekend. Pay attention. Breathe. Enjoy the insights and inner peace this brings you. As you look at what is around you and perhaps for the first time, really see. Practice some “mindful photography” by snapping pictures of things, perhaps fleeting things or objects in the natural world you find meaningful. Then strive to take this centered feeling back into the modern, techno world.
Can you maintain your sense of balance and the perspective that comes from being unplugged as you reenter the digital landscape? Will you be able to balance online and offline pursuits against technological peer pressure, in a world where it seems like everyone is constantly online?
If you can recover a sense of childlike wonder for the natural world, the rewards are immeasurable.
Go ahead, be brave. Unplug for a while. I’ll race you to the ice cream truck. Go on, I dare you!
