I've been wrestling with distraction recently, or maybe it's wrestling me. It wraps around everything, blurring edges, stickifying piddly games and petty people.
I blink, years wisp away. My time spent, life.. blurred. Things and people I want to pour time and love into disappear; I don't even notice.
I'm distracted.
The usual suspects could be blamed - Facebook, texting, some favorite tv program. I like that idea, on the surface. Adding to the list makes me happy, too - work, taking care of my mom, family, the pets.
Maybe there's justification. I love my mom, the dog's on a schedule and needs meds. Maybe that project has a timeline, my career means providing better, more.
But the fact remains, I am the one surrendering to distraction.
I choose it first.
And that's not ok. See, I made a commitment before I knew what the word meant and the world looked like. I said I'd have one love, one first among many, one response to distraction. I knew even then I wouldn't follow through, because I was young enough to be lose thought when I saw a pretty flower. But I said I'd try.
And that's the problem with distraction - it takes away my want to try. I settle, with my preferred things around me in my preferred life. I don't have to see what I don't want to, do what I don't want to. Those things pull away from my preferences and wants, so they stay and I choose to wander.
But there's no weight of beauty in distraction. To rephrase C. S. Lewis, distraction is the joke worthy happiness and wonder doesn't bother with.
Distraction pales. It blinds.
And eventually, I don't care to see the difference between the pale and the worthy.
There's a conference this October I could actually attend for the first time since it was created 5 years ago. It's free to attend. And actually in a state below the Mason-Dixon. It's in a month when I need to eat vacation time, but before the big push at work. The founder speaks good into the world, empowers the fatherless generation towards hope.
But my distracted brain muddles through the oppressive questions of worth.
Should I really go to a city I've never visited before *just* to hear an attractive man talk about things I would like to listen to anyway? The money spent on travel and hotel and a car could buy me a new laptop; buy my mom a new one. (My brother can buy his own. :P) Why should I go spend 5 days away from my house, my beautiful cable connected wireless network (and bed!) to go to a conference which will make me question the worth of a quiet, small life? Small and quiet can be powerful, like iPods and vials of nitrogen glycerin; why should I deal with the guilt of feeling I should be doing something bigger or braver?
How much of my questioning comes from fear distracting me from the worth of a struggle and new experience?
How do I figure out what path to take when my life (filled with socially acceptable responsibilities like work and an aging, seizuring mother) distracted me from the community primarily responsible for giving me a place to wrestle with questions and distraction in the first place?
How do I disengage a sticky wrestle with distraction when I crave to be distracted?
Jean Twenge wrote her doctoral thesis about the dissatisfaction driving modern world citizens living in America to distraction. It morphed into a book called Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - And More Miserable Than Ever Before.
An except from the author's site encapsulates my apathy and ambivalence:
GenMe's focus on the needs of the individual is not necessarily self-absorbed or isolationist: instead, it's a way of moving through the world beholden to few social rules and with the unshakable belief that you're important. It's also not the same as being "spoiled," which implies that we always get what we want; though this probably does describe some kids, it's not the essence of the trend (as I argue in Chapter 4, GenMe's expectations are so great and our reality so challenging that we will probably get less of what we want than any previous generation). We simply take it for granted that we should all feel good about ourselves, we are all special, and we all deserve to follow our dreams. GenMe is straightforward and unapologetic about our self-focus.
I hate that clinical voice condescendingly saying wanting what I want when I want it isn't spoiled but social expectation writhing through my head.
Especially when I know it's not true.
Nothing de-stickifies distraction quite like an ego bruised by the truth.
Going to the conference or not won't dictate how strong a pull distraction has in the future. It's not even really the point.
The choice to be distracted, to choose anything before what I committed to first is.
Which means I can go to a city to see a wise, attractive man and explore beauty, feeding my soul. Then I can go to back my grown-up job and live a responsible life.
I can return to my love, and ask forgiveness (again) for being distracted into not losing thought and giving thanks when I see pretty flowers.
I blink, years wisp away. My time spent, life.. blurred. Things and people I want to pour time and love into disappear; I don't even notice.
I'm distracted.
The usual suspects could be blamed - Facebook, texting, some favorite tv program. I like that idea, on the surface. Adding to the list makes me happy, too - work, taking care of my mom, family, the pets.
Maybe there's justification. I love my mom, the dog's on a schedule and needs meds. Maybe that project has a timeline, my career means providing better, more.
But the fact remains, I am the one surrendering to distraction.
I choose it first.
And that's not ok. See, I made a commitment before I knew what the word meant and the world looked like. I said I'd have one love, one first among many, one response to distraction. I knew even then I wouldn't follow through, because I was young enough to be lose thought when I saw a pretty flower. But I said I'd try.
And that's the problem with distraction - it takes away my want to try. I settle, with my preferred things around me in my preferred life. I don't have to see what I don't want to, do what I don't want to. Those things pull away from my preferences and wants, so they stay and I choose to wander.
But there's no weight of beauty in distraction. To rephrase C. S. Lewis, distraction is the joke worthy happiness and wonder doesn't bother with.
Distraction pales. It blinds.
And eventually, I don't care to see the difference between the pale and the worthy.
There's a conference this October I could actually attend for the first time since it was created 5 years ago. It's free to attend. And actually in a state below the Mason-Dixon. It's in a month when I need to eat vacation time, but before the big push at work. The founder speaks good into the world, empowers the fatherless generation towards hope.
But my distracted brain muddles through the oppressive questions of worth.
Should I really go to a city I've never visited before *just* to hear an attractive man talk about things I would like to listen to anyway? The money spent on travel and hotel and a car could buy me a new laptop; buy my mom a new one. (My brother can buy his own. :P) Why should I go spend 5 days away from my house, my beautiful cable connected wireless network (and bed!) to go to a conference which will make me question the worth of a quiet, small life? Small and quiet can be powerful, like iPods and vials of nitrogen glycerin; why should I deal with the guilt of feeling I should be doing something bigger or braver?
How much of my questioning comes from fear distracting me from the worth of a struggle and new experience?
How do I figure out what path to take when my life (filled with socially acceptable responsibilities like work and an aging, seizuring mother) distracted me from the community primarily responsible for giving me a place to wrestle with questions and distraction in the first place?
How do I disengage a sticky wrestle with distraction when I crave to be distracted?
Jean Twenge wrote her doctoral thesis about the dissatisfaction driving modern world citizens living in America to distraction. It morphed into a book called Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - And More Miserable Than Ever Before.
An except from the author's site encapsulates my apathy and ambivalence:
GenMe's focus on the needs of the individual is not necessarily self-absorbed or isolationist: instead, it's a way of moving through the world beholden to few social rules and with the unshakable belief that you're important. It's also not the same as being "spoiled," which implies that we always get what we want; though this probably does describe some kids, it's not the essence of the trend (as I argue in Chapter 4, GenMe's expectations are so great and our reality so challenging that we will probably get less of what we want than any previous generation). We simply take it for granted that we should all feel good about ourselves, we are all special, and we all deserve to follow our dreams. GenMe is straightforward and unapologetic about our self-focus.
I hate that clinical voice condescendingly saying wanting what I want when I want it isn't spoiled but social expectation writhing through my head.
Especially when I know it's not true.
Nothing de-stickifies distraction quite like an ego bruised by the truth.
Going to the conference or not won't dictate how strong a pull distraction has in the future. It's not even really the point.
The choice to be distracted, to choose anything before what I committed to first is.
Which means I can go to a city to see a wise, attractive man and explore beauty, feeding my soul. Then I can go to back my grown-up job and live a responsible life.
I can return to my love, and ask forgiveness (again) for being distracted into not losing thought and giving thanks when I see pretty flowers.
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