By Jared Tankel
The computer screen flashes as different colors run across it. I sit there, mouth slightly ajar, eyes glazed over, as I absorb another fatuous video from my youtube homepage. I snap myself out of it briefly, only to fall back under the spell of the computer. Before I know it, an hour has gone by. “How has this happened?” I wonder silently to myself. “It feels like I only just sat down.” Deep inside I know that I already know the answer to this question, just like I always have. The youtube rabbit hole, as many call it, can catch your attention for hours, never letting you tear your eyes away. Once it has its grasp on you, there’s little you can do to escape, besides watch yet another pointless video. I sigh, realizing that another hour of my life is down the drain. Gone, never to be seen again. I wake myself up, standing up to stretch. I ask myself what I learned from the past hour and a smile begins to form on my face as I realize that I remember nothing at all.
I sit on the bench, listening to the stream and the water cheerfully gurgles down the slight decline that one may consider a miniature waterfall. I haven’t visited these woods behind my old house in a year, but now I sit in silence, letting the sounds of nature envelop me. I hear the chirping of birds, the rustling of squirrels in the brush, and the sound of footsteps behind me. I turn around and see a family walking their dog. We nod to each other and I resume sitting there in silence, deep in my thoughts, pondering whether or not the bird seated so precariously on the branch is a woodpecker or a warbler. I watch the sun begin to set over the tops of the trees, signaling that it’s almost the end of my hour here. I stand up and hear some sort of small animal that had settled near the end of my bench scurry away. I turn around and see a deer in the woods, making eye contact with me. I smile at it, thinking about all that I’ve experienced in the past hour. I vividly remember the water, the birds, the wildlife – every aspect of it, and how they all make me feel like I don’t have a care in the world. It’s not a feeling that one should take for granted and it not one that I would trade for anything.
In conclusion, this experiment was fascinating, as I rarely spend an hour with no electronic interference whatsoever. I feel like everyone who has a phone should try to spend a lot of time off of it, as you don’t realize how the stream of constant information tears you down until you have a break from it. Learning more from not having my electronics than from being on my computer didn’t necessarily surprise me, as the feeling that I had was more of a recognition that I spend too much time on my phone. I learned that I spend too much time on my phone, and sometimes we need a break from the stream of information, as too much information can be overwhelming.