the non-virtual life

I sit at my computer, typing a blog that no one except my family knows about, listening to a presentation on Youtube about living the non-virtual life.

How ironic.

That’s the way our lives go now…the computer and “connectedness” is something we take for granted these days.  It’s become integral to our lives somehow.

The talk I’m listening to is one given by Tom Brokaw and Yvon Chouinard.

Brokaw just asked Chouinard if he’d “ever put his hands on a keyboard”…the answer was no…but then he said that his friend Tom McGuane says that “behind every Luddite there’s a woman with a computer”.

We know that there’s a big world out there…we can see it on the television.

I’m pretty connected these days…computer, cellphone, satellite tv…if there’s a way to get more connected I don’t know about it yet.  I do know how to set a dvd player clock to get it to quit blinking…but my daughter laughs at me because I don’t really know how to use my new cellphone.

We went out to roam around a little yesterday…hit a couple of thrift stores…ate some Indian food…went to a bookstore or two…went to REI.  I saw a couple of books about “nature deficit disorder”….wow.  Crazy, but too true….we don’t get outside to play like we used to.

There’s a natural order and need that we are bypassing now…with strange results.  “Nature Deficit Disorder”…that we even need to come up with a descriptive term like that is pretty crazy.  We need to be outside.

It’s an easy row to hoe to go from the car to the couch…get home and plop down, maybe after doing a few chores…just plop down and turn on the television and maybe…like we did last night….watch a movie about guys dying on the Eiger, freezing to death out in the harsh and unforgiving natural world.

Like I said before…here I sit, drinking my coffee and moving my fingers around on a bunch of buttons on a piece of plastic.  It doesn’t get much more disconnected to the world outside than that…but… wait a second…I did get a fire going in the wood stove…split some kindling….got it all going, fed the cat, looked at the moon….so I guess I still had a connection to it all if it was only in passing.

I guess I’m golden.

One of the things that this talk is making me feel is that success allows you to choose to not be connected.

At the far other end of the scale, you can be a Luddite because you can’t afford the connectivity.

Unless you get the government to give you a cellphone…Assurance wireless, I think the program is called.  How about that?  The government will give you a cellphone like it’s a priority that you’re connected.  (I think it’s so they can track everybody…but that’s just paranoia talking).

Dirt on our hands…breeze on our cheeks…a hawk overhead…there is something good that we’re given that doesn’t cost us anything more expensive than waking up and getting outside.

Maybe I’ll give it a shot when I finish typing this blog.

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

Comments are closed.