I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all busy. In this modern age we are increasingly caught within the present, physical, active lives that we lead — attempting to balance multiple worlds. Whether it be educational, social, familial or work related, it must be in perfect harmony. But on top of this existence is the expectation of a second self: your online persona. This persona deals with the nitty-gritties. They respond to emails, update long distance friends and family, check in on the news, take time for leisure and entertainment, and fulfil work deadlines.
Because they are a second self, they definitely have enough time to do it all. They can live and have it all. They can be it all. And that’s definitely why they were able to respond to that basic text you sent them 3 weeks ago… except they didn’t. They never replied and now it’s got to the point where the very act of replying seems like a chore in itself so they keep putting it off, dreading it. Because over the course of the last three weeks they’ve received similar texts that they’ve similarly put off and if they continue to think about the pile of things they’ve put off responding to and how they need to eventually respond to them they might just simply— implode. Sound familiar?
We live in an age of online hyper-vigilance and hyper-surveillance. We have the capacity to hold the whole world quite literally in our hands, having it available at our fingertips, and so we’re expected to continuously access it. But when we have a medium that so easily allows for communications, why then do we become paralysed when we are confronted with communication? Why do we tactfully avoid online? That text we received from a friend kindly asking how we are, that meeting to schedule in for the week, that ominous voice note you’re curious about, but not quite enough to open, the phone call you stared at and refused to pick up.
It’s because it’s overwhelming. It’s because once upon a time we wrote letters to one another, the pace of life was slower, and the expectation to lead a split life didn’t exist. As humans, we were not made to live consumed by technology, because technology is not natural. The letters we once wrote may have been impractical, but they fit the bounds of our passing lives. We aren’t meant to be available at every moment. Setting that standard, not only for ourselves, but for those around us, further perpetuates the paralysis felt when we lead our online lives. Our online life should not be our primary life, because we are first and foremost people. If we instead approach online tasks like we do with writing letters, applying thought and time to it, it makes the communication much more meaningful. This is because it no longer becomes a chore, it becomes an act of connection made with intention.
The purpose of this hyper-connectivity was to connect; this is a good thing – so we should allow this to continue to be the good thing that it is. We shouldn’t be chronically online, we should be thoughtfully online. So do what you do, and continue to tactfully avoid online, just make sure that you eventually don’t avoid it.