By Eric DeBerry
Virtually the entire world is online these days, all of humanity’s knowledge is accessible via the internet and social media, which is also hosted from the internet which reigns as king for interacting with friends, family, and strangers. I decided to hop on my computer and scour the internet as my source of media consumption. I start my hour by immediately opening Spotify and playing some music as background noise. This was done I realized a second later as pure muscle memory, not really a conscious thought given to it. It’s almost a ritual to instantly distract myself with music the second I have free time. I wonder how dull it must have felt back before having instant access to a backtrack to everyday life. Then again would it have really seemed dull if the distraction was not even something thought of as a possibility at their time? The world seems so small now with the ease of communication and ease of access to information and distractions at just the touch of your fingertips. I decide to open YouTube, something that has been at the forefront of my internet world since my childhood and start a video with a clip from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I am immediately hit with the most annoying and common part of modern life: ads. An eyerolling commercial with an emu, I watch fifteen seconds of this before my video. My clip rolls by and I, like the robot I am, click on another clip in the recommendations. Another ad hits me, the same exact ad. I endure the fifteen seconds and start my video. In what feels like a few minutes, I look at the clock and a little over an hour has passed. I look at what I am currently watching, I had gone from clips of a tv show to seeing a man make a sausage using only grounded up lemons. I barely noticed the time go by… I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my day on this stupid website, but then I see a thumbnail of the same man making sausage out of twinkies. What’s another a few minutes I think to myself and click on the video.
When it came to find a place to distance myself from the noise and distractions of Fairfax I immediately thought of home. I come from rural western Loudoun, where it took me twenty minutes to drive to high school, and traffic jams were created by tractors moving at five miles an hour rather than a million cars all trying to weave past each other. I decided that since I had the afternoon free, I might as well drive the hour or so back towards the country, so off I headed. I ended up at Raven’s Rock in western Virginia, a quick hike up the mountainside and I’m all but alone. The first thing I do is take a deep breath. There is something about the cold crisp mountain air that feels so refreshing. I find a fallen tree and use it as a seat to lounge back and survey my surroundings. It’s a bit too cold for too much of the wildlife to be active but you can hear the occasional bird in the distance and the snap of twigs as what I assume are deer move around in the distance. Its peaceful, quiet, and something I miss from before moving to Fairfax for school. The woods make the world seem to stretch and grow, seemingly less crowded and larger than the constant strip malls, townhomes, and various buildings that surround everyday life in the suburban area that neighbors D.C. and make everything seem within an arm’s reach. I sit for a while and reminisce about the camping trips and dumb high school parties I used to go to in these woods. Its then the timer on my phone goes off, and I am drawn back to the present and summoned back towards civilization.
My experience with this little experiment reminded me of how easily it is to be distracted by the small meaningless things shoved in our faces constantly and how much time we lose by getting drawn into these things. It also reminded me of how much I miss the quiet, and the peacefulness that can come from nature and the outdoors. Being from the country I often took these things for granted and it is only when I am coming back from the constant noise and stimulation from busy Fairfax do I realize how much I really appreciate the calmness of the countryside. Time seems to slow down when not I am no longer distracted by my phone or computer, but I also know that these things have become all but essential in modern society. The quiet of the country is relaxing but this world we live in operates from behind a computer screen, and while it is nice to unplug occasionally, the future is without a doubt plugged in.