Photo: Ian Sane's photostream

So far this year, I’ve read at least have a half dozen articles about expanding less out into the world, and focusing more on specific people, places, and work that mean something to the individual writing the piece (i.e. My Focus Word For 2012 Is…, Our Responsibility as Media Channels, The Artificiality of Time).

Perhaps the most brilliant and impactful article (considering it was in the New York Times) may be the one that showed up just at the end of 2011, The Joy of Quiet. As writer Pico Iyer writes:

Has it really come to this?

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

The too-fast pace at which we have moved – particularly over the last two years – has led to an all too-common feeling of burnout. We have computers that stay on all day long, phones that track us wherever we go (and that we can’t put down for five minutes even when we sit across from a friend at a cafe), social media networks that demand our attention at all hours.

Being constantly tapped-in and knowing what is happening to people on the other side of the country or the globe has not necessarily improved our lives, true connections, or well-being. While movements have toppled shady governments thanks in part to being linked in, we’ve become less connected to the human beings that sit directly beside us in full technicolor.

I don’t believe the answer is to shut down the computer and pitch it out the sun roof (though at times, I definitely think might be the best protest of all). Instead, it’s time to swing the pendulum back so that it ends up somewhere in the middle.

Balance. Use it for good, for efficiency, for your message. Then leave it alone and focus on building the real-life communities that surround you.

Focus inside. Enjoy the quiet. Sit in solitude. Free yourself from the constant adrenaline rush/addiction that is breaking your body down when you are constantly reading new things on the computer or iPhone or iPad.

If 2012 is really shepherding us into a new reality, let that reality be dependent on human interaction and love, so we can learn how to be better at this job of living.

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