Audio Version (music by Sergii Pavkin)
There is constant distraction, busyness, and the superficial or fickle pursuit of passion, but there is little substance or ethereal glue, and we let the game define the rules. We need to return to the present moment. We need to recapture the fragments.
We’ve grown accustomed to ineffective, clunky, mind-numbing technology, willingly paying exorbitant prices for this month’s latest model while pretending that our lives aren’t entirely dependent on electricity, networks, and the grid. No charge, no signal, so no connection?
When was the last time you talked to someone, and not just to complain? When was the last time you didn’t just partially hear something but actually paid attention and engaged? Instead of having a genuine tête-à-tête, we’d prefer to vent our frustrations, worries, and bowel movements on social media, a place of wanton ignorance and discordant muck. Full sentences have been replaced by emojis, yeah, huh, various grunts, and totallys. That, or endless talk about endless nothing.
Text and direct messaging allows us to take a moment — or maybe a few hours — to collect our thoughts, but it also encourages filtering, self-censorship, and miscommunication. It’s yet another cheat in a world full of cheats, hacks, edits, and rewrites. We can’t hold any semblance of real space for someone when we’re reliant on 4, 5, and 6G towers.
We’ve lost the will to speak — with our full voice, with our authentic selves, with resonance — and we can’t listen for more than a few seconds, let alone with presence. We may pick up on keywords and potential hashtags, but that’s it. Secretly, we’d prefer the too-long, didn’t-read summary of any conversation. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to scroll down a few pages and get to the point? Or, save the link for later, when we might be more interested. This is simply not the way humans function.
How is it that a toddler can say “I love you” repeatedly, smiling and exploding with joy, while we as adults crumble and cower in a heap of nerves, anxiety, and terror, deferring to diluted pleasantries?
Ooh, look, a funny cat picture.
Our throats, chests, lungs, and power centers are all constricted, tense, disregarded, and blocked. Do your shoulders regularly touch your earlobes? That’s not healthy, friend.
Our skin has become increasingly thin, and our egos have grown to astronomical proportions. To compensate, we adopt a variety of phobias, addictions, and neuroses. We compensate and assuage symptoms, but there is no time to heal, and no one can be trusted.
It’s critical that we find and reconnect with our music. Our internal harmony. There is no choir or chorus of one. We begin by reconnecting with ourselves, as we cannot explore our vulnerabilities in a vacuum.
We all hurt. We all love. We all learned to walk and will continue to learn as we walk on.
Solvitur ambulando
. . .
“Solutions” from Wander