A LIFE WITHOUT DISTRACTIONS

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Approx. Reading Time: 10 Minutes

That other year, 2018, during the December vacation, I started working as an intern at Mercury Communications in Port Elizabeth. I enjoyed the work there through and through but there was something I soon discovered. I was pressed for time. The only time I had to myself was from 8 PM to 11 PM, after hours. Three hours to do what I regarded as important.

In the beginning I would have my supper and afterwards sit and reply to the messages I had received on WhatsApp during the day. As I would be replying to them, some people would also start responding to my replies and those would then turn into chats. While chatting I would also check my Instagram. After that, while still chatting, I would then check my Twitter. The more I liked and clicked, the more precisely these apps would show me posts that were tailored to my previous engagement. I wasn’t simply stumbling over a litany of randomly scattered things online, but what was being offered was aligned with what I was doing previously. If I liked a picture of LeBron James, more pictures of LeBron James that I had not seen would appear and my eyes would stay glued and my obsessions reinforced. Before I would realize it, it would be 11 PM and instead of sleeping I would extend the whole process to 12 PM. Do not blame me, social media is always like that. The only thing that would have the power to stop me would be a message from my network provider. Social media was stealing away time I could be using on important issues.

Time was not the only issue. I would unconsciously leave my phone facing upward whenever I placed it on a surface. Whenever it pinged or lit up, I would check it and if I didn’t, I would be distracted till I did. Also, nothing could occupy me so much that I would not check my phone once or twice every five minutes. And in the morning, my social media was the first thing I checked literally before anything else without understanding that whatever was important on it was not going anywhere. My phone had tied a noose around my neck and it was only holding tighter every day that went by.

Then there was how the social media made me feel:

Instagram was my happy place, but it made me envy the lives of others who had seemingly made it in life. I envied how they dressed, the places they went to, the cars they drove and even the number of likes and followers they had. So I started trying hard to take the best pictures with other peoples cameras and in places I would regret going to because I honestly couldn’t afford to. All I wanted deep inside was to be loved and accepted by others. I would post an image and watch for the response. Then I would ask myself if I had gained the immediate approval of other people. I felt like I was betraying myself. The trade was also a bad one: my present moment in exchange for an endless series of someone else’s past moments. In a way, Instagram was stopping my own living.

Twitter made me feel like I was a part of some radical movement. I followed the politicians, millionaires, writers, musicians, poets and whoever came across to me as intellectual. And so even there I started trying to be like the people I followed. I also found Twitter highly opionated. If, for instance, fuel prices went up, everyone –a group I’m a part of- would be against the government without a thorough understanding of the Economics of it all. I tried to sound knowledgeable and like I had something to say. Inside it made me feel like I was trying too hard to impress people I honestly had no reason to. But then God is the one whose commends I must seek. I also wanted to understand the economics of it all and be well-read without basing my opinions on what I see on Twitter.

Then there was WhatsApp. There was not much harm being done here save for how much of my time it would take up. I also did not like how I constantly felt like I needed to update everyone with the happenings of my life. If I got a new job, I wanted to share it. If I went to some place, I wanted to share it. If I got a girlfriend, I wanted to share that too, on my status only of course. Each day I felt as though I was losing my grip on my online status if I did not deliver crowd pleasing content. How to express how that made me feel I still do not know but I did not like it. Vain glory was never going to satisfy my heart; it was only intensifying my craving for human praise.

And then it was not only the time it took up, or how it made me feel, but also how social media is filled with bite-sized information. The most liked posts are only four sentences long at most. Once I saw a post with ‘see more’ at the bottom of it or a status of words that ran from the top of my screen to the bottom I would scroll passed without as much as a second thought. The more time I spent reading ten-second tweets and skimming through statuses, the more my attention span was affected. My reading culture began to suffer. If a book looked long, I would not read it. If I did, I merely skimmed through with very little retention.

I wanted to continue using all of these platforms for all their benefits without having the downsides so I had to make a decision. Time is valuable gift and I wanted to protect mine. I tried to track how much time I was spending online, an idea I got from Wana Chinyemba but it did not work for me. It’s hard to change when you love what you want to change. If you feel it would work for you, like it does for Wana, go try it and more power to you while you’re at it.

So, I made a radical decision; I deactivated my Instagram and Twitter. I kept my WhatsApp because of all the important groups that I am a part of and also because how else would you have made your way to this post? And after that I am still breathing perfectly fine. Even though a part of me feared that if I left social media I would be out of sight and out of mind or that I would be missing out on a lot, I do not feel that way now.

Then came the question of what to do with the time created. I decided that I would use it to have my devotions (yes, even that had suffered), write blog posts, to read more books and to listen to more podcasts because these are some of the things I regard as most worthy of my time.

I decided to listen to more podcasts not only during that three hours but also during my commute to and from work. Podcasts have taught me many things I would probably have taken longer to learn. For instance, I did not know that by narrow-minded system standards, doing laundry, being pregnant, shopping for your household or similar labour is considered as being unproductive hence better ways to measure GDP in ways that value more than our livelihoods but that of the planet as well are needed. I listened to this on a TedEx podcast by Marilyn Waring. I have also seen how different people view life. Dwayne Johnson only had about ten people at his wedding and in a Podcast with Oprah Winfrey he explains why that was so. Besides this, I learnt from an Ask Pastor John podcast that my spouse’s greatest need from me is my own personal holiness.

Podcasts have also taught me to be articulate and confident in my speech and to only express what needs to be heard. They have shown me that even though it seems like everything has been talked about I can still express what I feel needs to be heard and reach someone and maybe make the world around me a little better than it is. They have also shown me that everything I go through someone else once did and so I can learn from them. And the best part about podcasts is that I can listen to them when my mind is too tired to read a book but still wants to learn something. I also listen to them while doing my chores or something not too involving. I use the app CastBox for all the podcasts I listen to. Honestly speaking, go and try it for yourself; you will see why podcasts are the new radio.

I also read noticeably more than I used to when I had more social media accounts. I, initially, started reading so as to pick up this ‘encyclopaedic’ knowledge. I assumed I could bring up whatever I learnt in conversations because I would have bits of information at my fingertips. This did happen to some extent but what was more helpful were the patterns that I picked up while reading. As I read a book, I learn how the author was thinking and I learn patterns of analysis and perhaps subconsciously these patterns go on to inform how I analyse things. The facts in the books and the information conveyed have been important but more so the authors thought patterns have influenced me the most over these past few months. All the books I have read have shown me different frames of analysis, of approaching the world and the problems that come my way. When it comes to solving problems it is no longer my voice alone but the voices of all the authors that I have read. I also blog now and most authors say that if you want to be a great author you have to be a great reader to learn the ways. This is true not only for writing, but all professions, and also for humans. If you want to be a great human you have to look at what great humans have done. I don’t have access to many great figures in my day to day life but books provide the avenue to meet them in other ways. I can’t talk to Nelson Mandela for obvious reasons but I can learn from him through literary works. And as I am reading I am learning how Seneca dealt with hardship, how Marcus Aurelius, or whoever dealt with love or the things that we go through in our day to day lives. I am rewiring my brain through all this. I have now been exposed to injustices, ethical conundrums and problems that I don’t know how to solve. There’s all this complexity in the world that I previously didn’t know about and reading has provided the avenue to explore it.

Why do all things come to an end? Why is time quickly passing? Before I know it I’ll be in the twilight of my life looking back on all the things I dreamed of and accomplished as a young man full of energy and also full of questions. Seneca said that it’s not that we do not have enough time but that we waste much of it. So should we turn back the clock and return to the simplicity of the ‘distraction-free’ pre-social media age? No—there may have been a pre-social media age, but there has never existed a life without distractions. Whether you are on social media or not, you cannot escape a life that divides your attention. So I will fill my spectacular journey of being alive with what’s meaningful while enjoying myself through the process.

Akwasi Dzifa