Slavery comes in many forms. Habits are their indicators. Freedom is the power to leave the jail and return when it chooses, its not to never live in a cell.
Last year Facebook was a canal for friends to import and I to export news and relational cargo. Since then, with much empty unemployed time I have morphed into a homebody that uses Facebook like a twitch of nervous habit. I wouldn't consider my usage of Facebook overbearing on anyone, not even myself. This culture has a funny way of slipping under our skin and requiring the slightest interaction and stimulation every instance. Our brains are living organisms, they have the ability to function differently from year to year. Its scary.
Have you ever tried to have an out-of-body experience? Or how about just imagining yourself siting next to yourself, a mere ghostly observer? I gazed and found myself in a fit of incoherent A.D.D. who had thoughts skipping like a five year-old on hot, sticky asphalt jumping around the purple chalked hopscotch grid. I rose from my kitchen table, five unconnected thoughts a second, aimlessly pacing to fill the gaps, and then somehow five or ten minutes later one of the former thoughts would find the next rational step, and then five minutes later I might conclude the thought or forget about it completely, moving on to something else that wasn't concluded. I reached for the cupboard and fumbled a Cheeze-It box and shagged a few in my mouth, not really realizing why, or what they even tasted like. With nothing to fill the gaps created by Facebook and the English language songs and ads, nothing except aimlessness, I realized I have surely adapted back to America. A place where if I am not under stress and doing something, a different task or thought every five minutes or a next thing, I don't know who I am or have no control and have forgotten about the inner stimulus and how to be inspired to from that and to be self-initiating.
Since my brain is used to taking in ten different stimuli a second it only allowed for one congruent and complete train of thought every ten minutes. Then when the gap filler, the nervous twitch, the outlet of all that - Facebook - was gone, my brain skipped the gaps, but didn't squish the thoughts together. If my thoughts were water and they flowed that would be enough. They wouldn't even have to be a smooth river or stream, just a waterfall, anything but the puddles they've been. As simple and fanciful as I would like, I must admit, I am not the five year old running through the street sloshing up muddy water in his glistening yellow galoshes as he tromps from one puddle to the next.
Clear the mud, let my thoughts flow and be conscious and strong in memory. Maybe I need the stimulus of stress? Maybe I should write more. Although I am slow, and typing this took me about 40 minutes, it does help. Now I push myself, to think faster, to stream like a 4G network. No, to stream like a human brain that is creating the 5G network.
