Original post from April 3, 2021
I ended last week’s post in a rather bleak place. In continuation, I wanted to share a post on Facebook that I saw and shared once, but I had no idea if I would be able to find it again.
It showed up as a “Facebook memory” as I uploaded the weekly post.
Of course I shared it again immediately, and included an abridged translation in my Hebrew post. The original is much more poetic, but unfortunately I shared it a week before and didn’t think to look then. So here I am translating back from my Hebrew version:
“Before I bring my presence to this device, I will ask to remember why I have come.
To stop and clarify why I chose to use it and feel the deep longing behind my activity.
Before I click on any link, may I recall the emptiness of the distraction … how it feels in my body and mind to dissipate my life force in meaningless activity.
May I forgive myself for the many betrayals of attention that are about to come.
May I remember that I am a human being with dwindling minutes in which to live out my deepest longings.
May I remember that I am about to connect to the most complex technology the world has ever known, and use it to serve the heart of love.
Finally, may I carry with me into the dream of the digital space the longing for truth, peace, and justice in the real world, which resides quietly beneath the desires of my mind, and use the time I spend here in the service of this being.”
As the poet here, Kris Drummond, wrote, even when we try, we can’t always remain faithful to what we came to do here. Here is my response to this, which of course may change:
- Use the master’s tools with the greatest awareness and caution we can muster, and don’t get down on ourselves when we fail.
- With sincere intention, sometimes the master’s tools will serve us as well, and bring us exactly what we need at the right time.
- At the same time, we must develop our own tools, which will fully embody the spirit of the world we want to create. If the source of the pain that leads to social media addiction is loneliness and meaninglessness, we have to create a solution for those, to build frameworks of togetherness, mutual support, and intimacy to relieve the suffering. We have to discover, learn and practice tools for inner, spiritual, and social development that work for us personally , in order to be capable of building and sustaining that world.
- Sometimes we’ll need to find or create half-way solutions, like virtual support groups that can be safe, empowering, and even life-saving spaces in absence of supportive physical communities.
For most of us it is necessarily a matter of both. We are the desert generations, one foot in the old concepts and one foot in the new story, sometimes more capable of holding the sublime and sometimes needing someone to lift us up and hold space for us. This is also why I am here – to hold the vision for others when I can, as others hold and strengthen it for me when I need it.*
* To those of you who read these lines that are among those that strengthen me, thank you from the bottom of my heart. <3