If there is one word to describe the progress made in the last 100 years, it's connectedness. From the telephone to the radio to the TV to the Internet, we have found ways to bring us all closer together, enabling，constant worldly access.
I don't think I need to highlight the benefits of all this. But the downsides are also beginning to show. Beyond the current talk about privacy and data collection, there is perhaps an even more detrimental side-effect here: We now live in a world where we're connected to everything except ourselves. According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, and we dread boredom and instead choose aimless distraction and use the noise of the world to block out the discomfort of dealing with ourselves.
However, we ignore the fact that never facing ourselves is why we feel lonely an anxious in spite of being so intimately connected to everything else around us.
Fortunately, there is a solution. The only way to avoid being ruined by this is to face it. It's to let the boredom take you where it wants so you can deal with whatever it is that is really going on with your sense of self. That's when you'll hear yourself think, and learn to engage the parts of you that are masked by distraction.
The beauty of this is that, once you cross that initial barrier, you realize that being alone isn't so bad. Boredom can provide its own stimulation.
When you surround yourself with moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately familiar with your environment in a way that forced stimulation doesn't allow. The world becomes richer, the layers start to peel back, and you see things for what they really are, in all their wholeness, in all their contradictions, and in all their unfamiliarity.
You learn that there are things you are capable of paying attention to than just what makes the most noise on the surface. Just because a quiet room doesn't scream with excitement like the idea of immersing yourself in a movie or a TV show doesn't mean there isn't depth to explore there.
Sometimes, the direction that this solitude leads you in can be unpleasant, especially when it comes to introspection (内省)—your thoughts and your feelings, your doubts and your hopes—but in the long term, it's far more pleasant than running away from it all without even realizing what you are.
Being alone and connecting inwardly is a skill nobody ever teaches us. That's ironic because it's more important than most of the ones they do.
Solitude may not be the solution to everything, but it certainly is a start.
| The Cost of Connectedness | |
| Introduction | ● the development of IT has brought us all closer together than ever before, we to connect ourselves while connected to everything. |
| The disadvantages of connectedness | ● We are afraid of a state of existence and the boredom it brings. ●We feel so uncomfortable when dealing with ourselves that we from it all and choose to be aimlessly distracted by the noise of the world. ●We often ignore the fact that never facing ourselves is to for our feeling lonely and anxious. |
| The to the problem | ●You can deal with whatever is going on with your sense of self. ●You'll hear yourself, think, and learn to engage what is masked by distraction. ●Being alone isn't so bad. , you'll be stimulated by boredom. ●The world becoming richer and ,the layers starting to peel back, you'll have views about what you see. ●You'll find yourself capable of being attentive to some things and in depth beyond noise and scream. |
| Conclusion | ●Solitude is the first step you should take to save yourself from being ruined by and anxiety. |
