Back to the Primitive
10/01/2018
I thought this essay of mine might be a good way to approach "Tech-Free Day." Though it is somewhat ironic that it is a blog post:)
Yes, your parents are petrified…
“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
They are petrified by the reality that your iPad and phone screens have become the constant and continual portal through which you live your lives. They are petrified that the tether between parent and child is frayed and fraying even more. It is not like the "old days" days that came (with challenges of their own) when parents could look out on the backyard and see with clear eyes exactly what you were doing. When you were in the house, they saw what you watched. When you answered the phone—a clunky box screwed to a wall—they knew who you were talking with; they knew their names and their parent's name and where they lived. They knew what plans were being hatched and where you were going. They knew what book you were reading or what card game or board game you were playing.
They knew you would be home when the streetlights came on.
It was, simply put, easier to know what the Sam Hill you were doing.
But you guys are the cutting edge of a new age. Everything—as in everything —is based on a trust in the unknowing uncertainty of murky technology. I live it every day with my own kids, and as much as I trust them, I am also petrified at what is going on behind the screen for so many hours of the day and night. I am also increasingly wary of my own role as a teacher in a paperless classroom creating a petri dish of possibilities with every assignment.
I give you the same amazing tool that I am hammering away on right now and trust that you have the wisdom and discretion to use this tool efficiently and productively to complete my endless assignments. At the same time, I enable you to flip between the worlds of WeChat, YouTube, Instagram, iMessage and any one of a million different games, chat rooms and websites that live and breath and entice you away from the heart and soul of my intent and what you should be doing.
Sometimes I feel like an ignorant Samaritan pawning hard liquor on an incorrigible drunk.
My plea is to not drink this wine of distraction in some dark corner of your room. Don't build a virtual wall between you and your family. Don't take a tool and turn it into a toy. And don’t get all pissy when someone questions why you are spending every hour from dinner to bedtime pecking away on a piece of glass.
I get it. You are saddled with an enormous crush of homework; you can multi-task with the best of them, and, you probably say with exasperation, you are just doing what everyone else is doing, and you are getting done everything you have been asked to do.
So what's the big deal?
The big deal is not in what you are doing; it is in what you are not doing. Thoreau once wrote, “You can't kill time without losing eternity.” Hours upon hours on a screen is hours and hours of time wounding the greater eternity of your life. It is time subtracted from the greater possibilities of a real and vibrant and active existence during a magic and mythical time. You are not engaged with those closest to you and who love you with every fibre of their being. You don’t look up when someone shouts “dinner is ready.” You are not outside on the brightest and best of days. You are not hanging out with friends on beaches, hillsides, forests, and riverbanks...
You are a flaccid lump of visceral fat on a soft couch.
You are immersed in an entropy of your own doing. You listen to music instead of learning to play music. You read posts on your wall instead of reading good books. Your bike rusts in the rain, and your brain rusts in its shell. You don’t get lost in the woods or chase fish in the streams. Your skin is unscraped and your hands are soft. A bird in the sky is just a bird in the sky. A tree is just a tree. You cannot call any of them out by name. You hide from the natural world of flesh and blood and spontaneous, joyous play and exploration. Your iPad wakes you, and your iPad lulls you to sleep.
You are not curious. You are asleep…
It is from this sleep that you have to wake up and begin to live life like a man, or at least as a boy. Don't go gentle into the night. Let your parents be petrified that your tree fort is too high, or you are riding your bike too fast or that the waves are too massive or the ax is too sharp. Make them wish they had raised a quiet and sedate son who is a bit of a homebody. Make them wish you didn't come home when the streetlights went on. Make them regret not knowing what mountain you chose to climb. Make them hold their breath before you jump. Make them a son who fixes things and figures things out. Make them a son who' lives life with passion, daring and uncommon wisdom. Make them a son who will look back on his childhood and have his breath taken away by the reckless energy and utter audacity of his youth.
Put down your iPad after your work is done. Do something real. Give a damn about your life.
It’s the only one you got.
~Fitz