Just for a few minutes before I invite the outside world into the house electronically in the morning, I wish to scribble a few words that are free from that stimulus. Habits are hard to break, and it’s especially hard these days to break the habit of zooming online first thing in the morning and several times a day.
They want us addicted, they want us binging, whoever “they” are — these are the bread and circuses the Roman emperor spoke of, honed to a sharp edge and carving our brains up for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Head cheese.
So what do I have to say now, when my brain is still clear and stimulated by little more than a brisk late-summer morning? “Turn it off and leave it off!” is the first exhortation that springs to mind, although I release the words for consumption into my web log, and so the advice is counterproductive and disappears into the white noise of other electronic voices.
I’m left to hope and pray that some will hear some truth in what I say. Like all advice givers, I am a hypocrite, crying to anyone who will hear, “Turn off your electronic stimulants, all of them, and turn your ears and eyes to the sights and sounds of nature. Of course, don’t turn ME off.”