It's hard to know where to begin this story, if it indeed has a point that I can mark as a definite beginning. It seems to have been something that I was simultaneously aware of and that crept up on me. Maybe the beginning was when I left school, when I deleted my facebook, or when I quit university. Maybe it was that part of 2014 where I tried to be more mindful. Whatever it was, it flicked a switch in me and to explain it I will start at the most recent beginning: my trip to the USA. Before this point I'd never travelled alone before, and I'd seen a lot less of the world than I would've liked. So I jumped on a plane not knowing what lessons I would learn.
What struck me most when I got to the summer camp I was working at was the quick connections I made with the other counsellors. We had all been thrown in an unknown situation together and because of this everyone reached out for someone to connect with. Being severely limited on social media we were forced to live in the moment; something that made me realise I was living an adventure I'd so often lusted after on instagram and tumblr. If internet access had been more readily available I'm not sure I would've realised at all.
I first noticed a real change when we went to visit New York City on our day off. I remember standing in Times Square looking up at advertisement after advertisement and feeling sick. Maybe it was all the stimulus attacking my senses at once, but I think it was more than that. I was beginning to understand the influence that massive corporations and advertisers have on our sense of self, our sense of worth. I felt like an outsider trying to understand the world but I just couldn't make sense of it. People were commenting on how amazing the place was but the only thought in my mind was that I had never seen something so ugly in my life.
Towards the end of my time at camp the best thing happened to me. I lost my phone. I no longer had an excuse to be looking down. Once camp was over and I started travelling alone I got a new one for safety reasons, but still held onto how unencumbered I felt during those few weeks when I had nothing. It made me lift my eyes up more. I made conversation with strangers. I sat alone in public without any distractions that trick people into thinking I wasn't really alone. I smiled to myself and plucked up the courage to hand out compliments like they were a form of currency.
I realised social media was anything but social and the more I became aware of this the more frustrated I became at myself and the world in general for allowing ourselves to be swept up in this false illusion of authenticity. Of thinking we're living a real life when it is always in the back of our minds which photo would look good on instagram, which story would most impress the people that we probably don't even care all that much about. While we ponder these questions we forget that the best camera we have is our own eyes and the most important person to share a moment with is ourselves.
I came home and was partially sucked back into a life of likes and carefully constructed online personalities. But not completely. My mind had grown too much to fit back inside the confines of my life at home, and instead I needed to build a new place for it to rest.
I got rid of bags on bags of possessions, still feeling like I owned too much "stuff" that distracted me from (heaven forbid) having to take a long hard look at my life and realise it wasn't the kind I wanted.
My phone stopped working and I went back to one I can only use for calls and text. I stopped eating meat. I started reading more books that resonated with my state of mind. For almost a month I listened to no music, pressing play only on lectures by philosophers and other inspiring humans. I was slowly bringing my conscious attention to something that had always stayed hidden at the back of my mind; this "life" I'd been living, of ego, of judgement, of the mindless consumption of media and unnecessary "need" of things, as well as projecting an image of my life online and being swept up in other's projections had to stop.
I couldn't play along with this game anymore.
So now I find myself at the present moment, ready to make changes. There is a quote about letting parts of yourself die that I understand more now:
"Kill what you don’t like. I had an old self that I killed. You can kill yourself too, but that doesn’t mean you've got to stop living"
I'm deleting my personal instagram. With my job being online I cannot remove myself from the internet completely, but I'm going to use social media only for my work. I'm going to stop letting a needless desire to consume more and more pointless things rule my life. I want to strip life back to its bare bones. I'm keeping this blog as it would be foolish to abandon something that brings me so much joy and keeps me creating. The content may change though; more in favour of long writing and thoughts in a hope of connecting deeper with the community here.
I need a whole separate posts to talk about my resolutions for next year, but until then know that I want to actively seek out more like-minded people. I want to write letters and exchange ideas on big questions. (Please let me know if there is anyone I should connect with.)
It feels so good to get it out of my mind and into words. Change is coming and it will keep coming until the day I die. That is the beauty of life.
