Fasting used to help us get a physical detox once in a
while. It used to provide a balanced
metabolism and build in right immune system.
But today, we are so much overloaded with technology and gleaming
gadgets. No one walks around without a
mobile in hand or pocket and without heads phones hanging over. People keep talking in air as they walk, run,
jog, sit, eat, and sleep. They are
talking into the phone…ignoring who is around you.
I love technology and I make a living working for one of the
largest technology company. I am not an
exception to this addiction. Sometimes,
instead of the gadgets serving or helping me, they have become my energy
consuming devices taking away my precious time and thoughts. Creative forwards are killing my own
creativity and thinking. I am enjoying
the repeated memes and endless shares.
This unending connectivity gives me no time to connect
within, with my hobbies, with my friends over a coffee table, with a paper-book
in hand. It is challenge…I feel totally
lost without internet, without my phone beeping on messages and if I don’t get
calls for half day, I start feeling desperate that the world has forgotten
me.
Thanks to the recent floods in Chennai, that thrashed this
syndrome of virtual connectivity restlessness…no messengers worked, Skype was
at sky distance, mails flooded the mailbox and not our heads, and Facebook and
Twitter didn’t flood me for 5 days.
I don’t dare to take the pledge of continuing this disconnect
from the world, but I realized that it is time to start keeping things in
control. Start with few hours of digital
detox every day. Probably, I would talk
to my neighbor aunty over the compound wall, than wishing her happy birthday on
the Facebook Wall…
Mails can wait, unless someone’s roof is on fire. Stop my followers and likes on pictures on
the net. I will give myself a chance to
reconnect within.
Not typing ‘Om’ hundred times on internet page, but to sit devotional in the puja room and fold my hands and say my prayer loudly. Instead of sharing pictures of sweets and
cakes, probably I will carry a cake at 12 in the night on a friend’s birthday.
Instead of repeated promises to get fit, I now need to tie my
shoes and take the first few steps in the nearby park. Yes, I have to start living. Not just in the virtual world. I need a digital detox for sure. And if not now, When? If not I, who?
