On Connectivity

What does it mean to be connected? Is it requisite, or luxury? How does it affect our experience, our quality of life?

One of the reasons I took this mostly-temporary leave of the States is to disconnect, to remove myself from the web of support that I felt was making me lazy and apathetic. Part of this was the need to see whether I could achieve something without the comfortable familiarities of home. But more than that was the desire to break free from the incessant connection to media of communication and information. No matter where I went in the States, there was a cell phone, internet, billboards and advertisements, and a million different ways to feel connected to uncounted people and bits of information.

In these intentions, I seem to have failed. Or perhaps I haven't failed, but rather have discovered that it was not my location but my choices which demanded the connectivity. Here, a third of the way around this rocky globe, my pocket still holds a cell phone, my fingers are still leashed to the threshold of the internet, and I can't break from the desire to seek contact among my friends, my family, and in hundreds of websites, the sources of empty entertainment and counter-productive distractions.

But if the distressing attachment and exposure to such distraction is the price of saying the occasional 'hello' to those close to me, I'll gladly pay it ten-fold.

PS-- apologies for the delayed post, again. Internet was down, and has finally come back up.