The more I talk with people about the state we find ourselves in, the more I sense a thirst to break from the digital madness that has infected our country, our politics, and our brains.

At the risk of sounding like a hopelessly antediluvian curmudgeon, let me suggest a more analog approach. *

In an essay entitled After You Vote: Unplug, Cal Newport— the author of Slow Productivity, A World Without Email, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work, among other books—makes a suggestion that could be helpful no matter who you voted for on November 5th.

“(U)se the stress of this election to be the final push needed to step away from the exhausting digital chatter that’s been dominating your brain. Take a break from social media. Stop listening to news podcasts. Unsubscribe, at least for a while, from those political newsletters clogging your inbox with their hot takes and tired in-fighting.”

It is easy to see why this move might be necessary. It can also be good for you and for the country. Many wise people take a further step and suggest that we be intentional about how we direct “our newly liberated attention” even if our decision is to live in a more unstructured fashion.

I’m not suggesting we give up or give in. The fight for justice and democracy is never-ending and it requires our participation. But obsessing over social media is not the way forward.

Reconnecting with nature is an almost universal prescription for restoring our wholeness as a people. In Washington, we are blessed with an abundant tree canopy which encloses 37% of the city. The nation’s capital is fourth among U.S. communities with the most tree coverage per capita. While our drought has dimmed the full exuberance of color as seen in recent years, this fall we’ve nonetheless had many examples of trees ablaze with magnificent color.

The analog world is quite beautiful. Yet I’ve noticed a tendency among too many residents to hurry past this amazing display.

Even Rock Creek Park, a veritable cathedral of nature, is not immune to our mental disappearance. Drivers rush through, barely noticing their surroundings. Elsewhere heads are buried in smartphones in the midst of some of the area’s most stunning displays, like the blanket the ginkgo tree lays upon the ground in the fall.

Essayist Maria Popova reminds us that “to live wonder-smitten with reality is the gladdest way to live.” But we have to take the time to recognize the wonder, the joyful, the fulfilling that sparks awe in humans.

We find wonder not just in nature but in leisurely lunches and conversations at a sidewalk cafe, in talks with a child as they explore the world around them, in deep reading of books, in simply finding a bench on which to sit and think. However, too few of us choose to order our hours and days this way. The ability to live wonder-smitten lives is often crushed by a culture that demands that we always hustle, striving to achieve more. It is the race that never ends.

The difficulty of finding the proper balance in a fast-paced world is an oft-heard complaint. In times of great stress it is even more important to step back. To think. Watch. Heal.

We can still stay connected to the world, but in different ways.

“I suggest you switch to a slower pace of media consumption,” [writes Newport]. “Don’t laugh at this suggestion, because I’m actually serious: consider picking up the occasional old-fashioned printed newspaper (free from algorithmic optimization and click-bait curation) at your local coffee shop or library to check in, all at once, on anything major going on in the world.”

We have discovered modernity and, unfortunately, latched on to the parts that are unfulfilling for too many of us. We can fly, but at what cost? E.B. White once wrote, “The curse of flight is speed. Or, rather, the curse of flight is that no opportunity exists for dawdling.”

In place of the rat race and the digital clutter, focus on what sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls “moments of resonance.” When things really touch us, they resonate within us. We’ve all had these moments, but we have to be present in the experience.

Slow down and you might find yourself not only more productive but also exhibiting the type of love that is far more than an emotion, but is, instead, something of great activity. Newport suggests we aim our newfound time “toward real community, with real people who actually live near you, to retrain your brain to stop thinking of the world as hopelessly fractured into vicious tribes.”

Finally, consider reading books again. “There’s a pleasure in the conquest of deep ideas that’s been lost as we thrashed in a digital sea of churning distraction.”

But don’t over plan this new approach.

“The good life has more aimless wandering, less frantic racing, more spontaneity, less scurrying,” asserts Brian Klaas. “It gives us the space to do one of the most important things a human can do: to notice and relish the joyful, the fulfilling, or even the merely pleasant bits of life.”

One of the things [Uncle Alex] found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

Kurt Vonnegut

Take your head out of your smartphone. Avoid the doomscrolling. Look around. Embrace the liminality in life. Remember that “we are here to keep watch, not to keep.” Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

And bash into some joy along the way.

More to come . . .

DJB

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*Yes, I understand the irony of the fact that the essays that Cal Newport and I posted are online.

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Photo of Rock Creek Park (credit NPS)