Silence, Contemplation, Loneliness!

Yes. Our "distraction sickness." I do think Andrew Sullivan writes about something pretty damn important about our 24/7 multi-tasking, always connected, always distracted culture.

You remember Andrew? One of the original "uber-bloggers" who built a pretty impressive empire on the web, and then walked away from it all, in order to reclaim his health, his life. Andrew is certainly an odd duck, hard to put him in a neat box: British-born, American Citizen, Catholic, Conservative, Gay, HIV-Positive. Excitable. Intelligent. Excellent writer. Very eloquent about many issues. Really took a strong, perfectly reasoned, and impassioned stand against the Bush/Cheney torture regime.

Anyway, yes, we are distracting ourselves to death. Armed with our smart phones. Here but not here. Always scanning, flipping, surfing.

I still own a "flip-phone." So happy I grew up in an era where there weren't computers and smart phones. I got to experience the world without those filters. Where do we put out attention? Our attention is in short supply. Maybe instead of multi-tasking we should "un-task!" 

There is something to be said for silence, contemplation, loneliness, meditation, the ability to concentrate, to focus on one thing. One thing at a time. To be here now. I can easily walk away from my computer, and live my life, in the stream of life. 

There is a certain clarity in the silence. The aloneness. There is something pretty great in sitting in meditation, and letting the world wash over us. Undistracted!