Meditation

Philosophy of yoga is one of the classes I'm taking this semester. A few weeks ago, the professor was elaborating about one of the main goals or concepts in yoga: that of withdrawing from the outside world and looking inside yourself. In meditation, this concept is embodied in occurrences such as when a tree crashes down beside a meditating yogi and s/he doesn't even notice it. 

Someone raised their hand. 

"Why... would you want to do that?"

Everyone laughed and some of the more yoga-inclined scoffed. 

But the question was a great illustration of our modern mindset. The idea of withdrawing from the outside world completely is a scary thing for people in our generation. We are constantly connected, logged in, online. Twitter might as well be a GPS if you're going to tell everyone where you are every 30 minutes. Losing your cell phone=social quarantine/death!

When did we become so wrapped up in virtual reality? Some may argue that it's a great distraction from real reality, which is even worse. To me, this is sad. I was hit particularly hard by this sentence in one of the readings: "Media technologies do not bring great things to life, they simply shift the venue where you have to go to feel alive." Wow. I certainly do not want to have to be dependent on technology and virtual reality to feel alive. 

In terms of feeling overstimulated or not being aware that I'm "speeding up" or slowing down or whatever point they were trying to make, I AM AWARE that I'm overstimulated. Like I said in class, my iPhone controls my life. It does make me feel irritated, stressed and overwhelmed. There's always a text message, missed phone call, e-mail, twitter update, or facebook message that I'm missing out on. I feel a sense of relief and empowerment when I leave it in my car at the gym. 

But I can still participate in these so-called "slow activities." I spent hours over spring break digging in the dirt and building sand castles with my three-year-old niece. I hadn't been that concentrated and content in awhile. Maybe it's just that we have so much more access and choice of the things we LIKE, so that when we are forced to read a boring article or book, we know of all the millions of other things to read at our fingertips and become picky. 

I think maybe there is much truth but some exaggeration to the attention span article. I certainly still enjoy being with friends without videos (wtf?), riding the bus without checking e-mail or my messages (though I often do...and listen to music 99.9 percent of the time). I also grew up in the country with no cable television and no video games. What the heck did I do before we got the Internet? Well, I read books and played pretend. Aren't those some sort of other reality as well?