PREPENT5772/Day Eight: UNPLUG?

 

Day 8/40

 

September 9, 2011

 

Unplug?

 

 

 

I’m probably about 40 emails behind at the end of this ‘summer’s over week’, the important ones anyway, and now there’s homework, and deadlines, and friends in from out of town, and the week’s up, and lots of weekend plans, and crazy though this is I really am going to unplug and de-digitize for the full Sabbath.  Everything will wait.  Unplug.  Really?

 

Living without an Iphone, even for just 24 hours, is a huge pain in the ass and

Totally interrupts my flow of daily living, heavily digital.  It involves a lot of planning ahead and firm arrangements.  And, besides, I’m addicted.  Then there’s the payoff, true and tried:  slow down, focus, recharge.

 

Why is it so hard to unplug?  Why do so many of us find it so difficult to turn off phones or computers, even when we get the concept and love the idea, and tried it and love it?  Myself, of course, included. 

I was recently told that there’s even a ‘texting on shabbes’ crisis in some very Orthodox communities – mostly among the teens.

 

There’s a lot posted all the time somewhere online about what really is happening to our hyper digital minds in this virtual age– and what this is doing to our souls.

 

I think the Sabbath  - custom made to suit our needs - can help the soul survive the digital divide.

 

Seriously. There are tons of ways to figure out what unplugging means to each of us, and how we recreate, and plug-in to what this unplugging day is all about. My comrades in the Reboot factory came up with the super useful ten tip guide - the 

sabbath manifesto and with YELP! the rousing hymn to unplugging with a loving nod to Allen Ginsburg’s Howl: “Unplug! I’m with you to cut the umbilical cord of data. To disconnect from the info sphere. Unplug!”

 

unplug?

 

 

Shabbat Shalom.