Life Without the Internet
We are surviving. Six months ago, I made the brave— yet possibly annihilating— decision to cut the internet at home. Immediately, upon disconnection, I expected my children to rally for my execution. However, contrary to expectations, my children began sputtering, gasping for breath, pushing forth into rebirth.
Was it possible to survive without being plugged in?
My family grumbled for a while. They challenged my firm stance, my claims that television and the internet corrupt, with the stock accusations so often directed at parents: "It's always what you want. We have to do what you want." This went on for a while, but then— like all arguments— the words soon lost their freshness, their power. The argument became stale and the family settled into the idea of life without the love/laugh/death/sex (of other people's imagined lives) mainlined directly into our mental veins.
Contrary to what I expected, the bored proclamation: "There's nothing to do" was never sounded by my children (and the disconnection was perpetrated in winter, of all seasons!). We played games together: Snakes & Ladders, Don't Wake Daddy, Senet, Hangman... We listened to each other's stories, and we actually paid attention. We watched each other's faces, our eyes not tempted by the flicker of the television screen off along the periphery, or the cell phone twinkle in our hands. We asked questions, and were actually answered. We read more books.
Sitting around the living room, my children’s eyes no longer glued to cell screens, watching inane videos or attuned to the non-stop conflict between friends, I sensed the presence of liberation, of hostages who had been freed and were patiently watching me for direction. There was no more "Just wait `til this is over,” "Excuse me, please, you're blocking the screen,” “Check out this amazing video,” “Shhhhhh,” “Move out of the way, this is the best part…”
I watched my children rediscovering play. My son anxiously standing before me, joyfully explaining the specifics of what he had read in books, his eyes shifting toward the walls as he imagined what he had read, as he envisioned his own personal imaginings, not those of the communally muted sort, packaged for the masses, preselected pre-imagined visions that require no cerebral collaboration from the viewer, and thus inspire little mental resonance. The shallow depth of mass media.
Over the past six months, I have noticed the subtle changes in my three children. I have noticed the minor gestures they have added to their repertoires. I have taken my time to study my glorious children with wonder, to enjoy and cherish them. I have noticed their growth, the minute shiftings in facial features and body language, with undistracted clarity. And I have realized that the internet truly does distract a person from real life, from the movements and variances that connect one to the present. When watching television or gazing into the internet, the workings of our own lives become distractions. Real life becomes a distraction, an interference.
I have to admit that we did not entirely shed our electronic preoccupations, we did not become complete monastic purists. Movies were still shown in our home. The television did— indeed— continue to flicker. Movies were selected from our collection of VHS and DVDs, played and savoured. But this viewing spectacle became something that remained finite. The movie did not continue to pulse eternally, tempting the watcher away from other interests. When the movie was over, it was over, and the viewer moved on to continue with real life.
However, two weeks ago, our VHS/DVD combo machine gave up the electro-ghost. That was the end of that. So now we are totally without visuals, totally on our own; without the ability to laugh at a perfect stranger's stumblings and fumblings, without the means to fall in love with the body of a person who we will never meet or know, without the televised emotional promptings that beckon us to cry for the sorrows of someone who has absolutely nothing to do with us. The television's and internet’s peculiar hypnotic power defeated.
Now, the cell phones sit in a drawer, the television rests blankly on its pedestal, like a statue honouring a silenced dictator. Since its fall, since we have come out from under its tyrannical digital rule, our freedom restored, our lives have faded back into full focus. Our own lives have become more important than the televised ones we had been idolizing.
An earlier version of this article appeared in The Globe & Mail
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