One week of quiet
Part of the non-exhaustive list of cool things to do series.
How cool would it be to spend one week away from the city, in a quiet area. Away from the world and the problems. Away from the noise. No one talking, not even ourselves. Just quiet and focusing on the surroundings. A mountain, the ocean? It'd need to be in a place that brings calm. Most importantly though, no connection. No contact with the outside world. No notification, facebook, twitter, whatsapp, instagram, and all that. Just yourself, books, paper. I wonder if I would even be able to do it. I don't count how many times I pick up my phone everyday just to check if I have received a message. Not having my phone with me would feel so strange. My day really depends on the message I receive on my phone. It's almost as if the phone owns me and not the other way around. Not looking at my phone for a week would almost be freeing myself from my obligations.
But then it gets scary. If you don't have too many distractions, you are left with yourself. Am I friends with myself? Would I be able to bear being with just me? Can I befriend myself? Can I introspect and open all those weird little boxes that are shut within my memory? I don't know. But it's something worth experiencing. If I can be at peace with my mind and myself, I think I'd be worth it. Or maybe I'd simply go crazy. Yeah that's a real possibility.
Our phones allow us to escape being with ourselves. We can't really be alone anymore, we're always one click away from seeing cute kittens doing cute kitten things. It's hard to embrace problems and befriend them when you can just look at something else. It's also easy for me to blame technology, but at the end, we chose how we deal with things. Tech is only the verdant path on the fork in the road.