My latest column from Miami Today, published June 18, 2015
Cacophony; that’s it, this is what our lives have become. Instead of a melodious and carefully orchestrated sequence of planned events, our lives have turned into a random series of occurrences driven by immediate gratification and digital sounds, which is what the twenty first century will be remembered for. To say nothing of the fact that I always wanted to say cacophony, which gets in the way of any planning at all.
Cacophony; that’s it, this is what our lives have become. Instead of a melodious and carefully orchestrated sequence of planned events, our lives have turned into a random series of occurrences driven by immediate gratification and digital sounds, which is what the twenty first century will be remembered for. To say nothing of the fact that I always wanted to say cacophony, which gets in the way of any planning at all.
There was a time when you could
isolate yourself and engage in some thinking or planning. You could set a goal
and try to pursue it through a series of rational steps. Today, you are lucky
if you get 30 seconds of peace and quiet before your telephone beeps, your
email alert pops up, and your electronic calendar reminds you to check
Facebook, lest your friend has diarrhea and you are the last one to know it.
Instead of thinking about our
future and planning ways to achieve it, we spend countless hours searching for
the miracle app that will replace our thinking. To improve your well-being you
need to resist immediate gratification and cacophony. This means turning your
phone off, not just airplane mode, but completely off. Go ahead. Try it. When
you stop twitching from withdrawal you are ready to think about a goal you want
to pursue. If you cannot keep your hands off your phone or tablet, you may need
to join a Buddhist monastery in Bhutan, where there is definitely no internet connection.
Once you overcome your addiction to
digital devices and your twitching subsides, you are ready for the next
challenge: be by yourself. No talking. No selfying. If this is hard, you can
say either ohm or cacophony a few times. Now you have to think. Let me tell you
how thinking works. If no thoughts come to mind, check your pulse. If you still
have a pulse, try to ask yourself questions: What do I want to accomplish in
life? How can I help humanity? How often should I change my underwear? Try
controlling your twitching.
It is possible that, despite your
good intentions to enjoy peace and quiet, somebody near you is talking on the
phone so loudly that you need to get a Bose noise cancelation device. Pretty
soon everyone will have to walk around with one, just to avoid the cacophony of
nonsense emitted by people who have nothing better to do than to broadcast to
the whole world their inane whereabouts. Not to mention fights with their ex
over the phone, in public spaces. Airplanes are the worst. No sooner the plane
lands than 99% of passengers reach for their smart phones to continue sharing
with their best friend scintillating details about their day: got up around 6
30 am, had my coffee, read the paper, passed gas.
The addiction to digital devices is
so great that some folks are now taking their laptops to the gym with them. At
our condo, where I usually can expect peace and quiet in the exercise room,
there appeared a guest who was in the rather small exercise room with his three
year old and a laptop. I could live with the kid walking around the fitness
equipment, but his father’s laptop was playing a video of a fitness instructor
yelling from the top of his lungs invocations such as: Does it hurt now? Do you
want to be a man? Do it! Do it! Be a man! Lift, lift, lift! The father was
following every word and every movement of the fitness guru. As the intruder
saw me coming into the small gym he asked if I mind the noise from the laptop. I
said yes. He told me that the video will motivate me and will be good for me. One
of the last sanctuaries of peace and quiet, our condo gym, which is usually
frequented only by senior citizens thirty years older than me, was transformed
by some digitally addicted brainless creature into a high decibel motivational
class by some equally brainless fitness addict.
But planning can be overdone.
Speaking from experience, I have spent more time in my life planning than
actually living. As an insecure, mildly paranoid, neurotic orphan, I spent
considerable time over many years striving for certainty and security in my
life. I spent so much time planning that I had barely any time to enjoy the
fruits of my planning. But I had a plan to stop all that planning. Instead of
planning, I started writing pointless stories. The fact that you are reading
these stories shows two things: I’m succeeding at my plan to spend less time
planning, and you have no plans whatsoever.
