So earlier this week, I deactivated my Facebook account and I canceled Netflix. I am purposefully simplifying my life, scaling down the distraction-on-demand outlets that only drag me down and ruin my peace. Although I am currently on the couch with a stomach bug, when I am at last better and able to stand up without falling over, I will get a library card and find myself some decent (not indecent or lewd or violent or overly political) fiction to read. I have plenty of books on theology, saints, Benedictine life, etc. here, but sometimes you know, you just want something lighter and fluffier.*
Thus far I am enjoying a life less plugged in. How can we simplify our lives? Take stock of how you spend your time and energy, and realize where your time and energy "leaks" out. I'm not talking about normal and healthy R&R, I mean the obsessive quality that certain distraction-on-demand venues elicit in us.
To live by chronos is to die an agonizing death where every second is fraught with coulda-shoulda-woulda. We become obsessed with the past or the future and neglect the space of the now moment. It is the invention of the clock; time that controls our actions and limits our sense of what is and what could be. Kairos** allows the Godliness of the present moment to ring out in every direction, yet being grounded in the moment of being. It's the closest thing we have to experiencing eternity on this side of the grave.
So how do you want to live? Wasting hours with things like Facebook, Netflix binging, hanging out at the 7-11 buying scratch tickets,*** getting lost on the Holodeck? Cause seriously if I lived in the Star Trek Next Gen and beyond universe, I'd be addicted to the Holodeck. I'd be worse than Geordi and Barclay combined. So I just wouldn't be able to ever go in there or I'd never come out. It's good to know one's limits.
How easy it is to let the poetry of our lives, both the joyful and the painful poetry, be muted and smoothed into non-essential background noise when we have music playing 24-7 with the TV on and the computer game going all at the same time.
Is that how you want to live your life? No one can say "There is no God" while dosing him or herself up with chronos noise. Cause how could you know there is no God if you never try to listen or give God a chance to sit down at the kitchen table with you?
* When I did an image search on Google for "light and fluffy," I ended up with 90% photos of pancakes, 10% baked carby goodness like muffins.
** I don't speak or read or write in Greek, but I know these two words. Also Kyrie Eleison.
*** Two weeks ago I purchased the 6th scratch ticket of my life and won $40.
3 comments:
A bit of irony... one of the big drivers in the advancement of clock technology was the need in Medieval monasteries to know when they had to get up at night to say their prayers.
Madeleine L'Engle wrote a lot about chronos and kairos. She even divided her recurring characters up that way - the Murry-O'Keefe family and their friends were kairos and the Austin family and their friends were chronos.
And when people at my day-job ask me if I want to go in on the office lottery tickets, I tell them, "I'm an author. That's all the lottery I can handle."
I loved Madeleine L'Engle's books when I was a kid. I should re-read them, as much of the finer points were certainly lost on me (such as chronos and kairos).
Can you point me to a source for the fact that clock technology was spurred on by Medieval monasteries? That's an interesting bit. I suppose it's the same old story - a tool created for a good use can become someone's slave master if one lets it.
Cheers
I picked up the bit about clocks from James Burke's documentary series, Connections. It's in Episode 5 (or Chapter 5 of the book version), "The Wheel of Fortune." A source listed in the book is Clocks and Culture 1300-1700 by Carlo Cipolla.
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