By: Sara Alemayehu
For my one hour of media consumption, I decide to go about my day as I always do. At about 1:00 p.m., I sit in my dorm to watch YouTube commentary videos about bad movies, then to watch trending videos about the news, then to watch popular videos about art and fashion. As I watch the commentary, plot points throughout the movie bounce in and out of my head, relegated to the margins of my brain and only there for my amusement. As I watch the news, the actual content of the news itself is overshadowed by the feelings of anger, confusion, and fear that each sensational headline carries. Then, as I watch art and fashion videos, the satisfying feeling of seeing visually stunning costumes, designs, and aesthetics seems to take precedence over understanding the history and perspectives associated with said art. I began to notice how the information from the media I consumed was absorbed through a heightened sense of emotions rather than greater objectivity. Due to the sheer amount of media available, creators and producers have to fight for the audience’s attention by appealing to the intensity of people’s emotions as attention spans continue to decrease.
For my one hour in nature, I took the metro to head down to Four Mile Run in Arlington, VA. From there, I went down the W&OD Trail in one direction for as long as I could within that hour. At the very start, I noticed huge swaths of of birds all around me flying in and out of the trail and to and from the grass right next to it. Unlike watching a video recording of this sort of occurrence where a person expresses exaggerated emotion for the camera, I was there to experience the feeling for myself and instead of focusing on my emotional reaction, I started getting curious. Why are the birds bunched up like this? Why are they flying in all sorts of directions as opposed to the typical migrational flock pattern that we are used to seeing? Why are they on the ground as opposed to the trees? As I continued to walk down the trail, I encountered quite common aspects of nature: trees, flowers, vines, creeks, and the like. But what had stood out to me was the way they appealed to my senses. The sound of water flowing down the creeks I passed by, the mildew feeling of the breeze in humid air, and the smell of the leaves that permeated in the air had all surrounded my senses, but did so without overloading them. After my hour-long walk ended, I headed to the East Falls Church Metro Station to travel back to my dorm.
As a result of my nature walk, I became more present and I began to take note of interesting things I noticed such as how nature conveyed information we still value now such as time, location, and weather, albeit in quite rudimentary terms. The colors of the leaves indicated the seasons, the types of plants that bloomed indicated the location and climate, and the temperature and flow of the wind indicated the weather. It was all different from how we received information now. In current times, we use electronic devices to grant us immediate access to information that we soon forget due to the vast amounts of information available to us. Whereas our ancestors lived a life deeply connected with nature where information was limited and held a deep understanding of said information to be passed down orally from generation to generation. In order to truly live in the Age of Information, we must utilize the resources that technology has provided us while also approaching knowledge and wisdom with the same diligence as our ancestors.