My Great Disconnect

This is an important post.

This morning, I did something I haven’t done…ever really…except for the time I spent 10 days in Israel, but even then I had a replacement on me.

I left my cell phone (more accurately my blackberry) at home. That’s right, ladies and gents. I am, in the 21^st century, the year 2010, without my cell phone. It is not on my person. So what the hell does that even matter?

Allow me to explain.

My crackberry (not a typo for anybody not a techie nerd) is my livelihood, my bread and butter. It connects me to everyone and everything I could ever want. It has every phone number I could ever need, I can reach anyone at any moment, I know the time, the temperature, the weather hour by hour, I can get directions, I can get definitions, I can browse the internet at my leisure, I can keep notes, I can keep count, I can keep a calendar, I can listen to music, I can watch videos, I can see what my friends are up to, I can…lose myself completely.

I’ve admitted to myself that I’d quicker give up my car than I would give up my cell phone. And, to validate the point I’m going to make next, I still wouldn’t give up my car that easily.

Why?

We live in a world defined by the things we have. And that includes the people and social networks we have. My blackberry is worth so much more if I have 500 people I can call instead of five. Or maybe that’s just my skewed logic. And I’ll get more into that later.

While I can’t speak for everyone, I know I don’t speak solely for myself when I say that we think we own our things, but they actually end up owning us. I heard a quote yesterday that was probably the creepiest one I’d ever heard: “Lions and tigers were once the kings of the jungle and now they’re in zoos. I suspect the same future for us.”

And while you may not see humans in the same kind of zoo, it’s a metaphoric zoo. A digital one. One called technology. We’re trapped and we don’t even know it. How Matrix of me.

Now, it’s not so drastic for everyone out there. Not everyone is addicted to their things and addicted to connection. I, on the other hand, kind of am. And that’s why this is important for me. My First Internet Enemy and I had an enlightening conversation about the foundations of beliefs. For the past decade I’ve been feeling a specific way about life, and for the past couple years, at least, I’ve been trying to change it, to no real avail. Or so I THOUGHT I’ve been trying to change it. My circumstances and the people in my life have certainly changed, but how I view life hasn’t changed at all. I’ve learned a lot, but I haven’t applied anything. Because my beliefs are so grossly ingrained in me. So how does one go about changing their beliefs?

Logic. Beliefs are built upon logic. We believe something because it makes sense to us. When it truly comes down to it, 2 +2 = 4 is a belief honored by a logic that we were taught and a logic that we trusted and made sense to us as children. It’s universally accepted that 2 + 2 = 4, so you’d be crazy (by society’s standards) to claim otherwise. But the real truth of the matter is…we just believe that 2 +2 = 4. And until someone or something shifts our perspective, we’re always going to believe that.

This is a stupid cliché, but it’s true. Seeing is believing. And that’s why my beliefs have never been changed. I’ve never witness something that challenged my logic. So what belief am I particularly trying to change?

What I’m worth (or not worth) and why.

Going back to the statement of having 5 or 500 people in my Blackberry, I see the world as quantitative. The more I have, the more I’m worth. The more I succeed, the more value I have. I’m addicted to praise and admiration. And every time I screw up, every time I make a mistake or hurt someone or do something that society has labeled as negative, I lose points. And since we’re human beings, we screw up a lot. It’s even worse when we make the same mistakes over and over…I know I tend to take more points off for those.

Somewhere along the line, I went way into the red…I believe…with my mistakes. So I’ve been scrambling and scrambling to make good on what I’ve done, which in cause has created more mistakes, putting me further into the red. When does it stop?!

It stops when I realize that mistakes are natural, and necessary. I should be freakin’ exhilarated every time I make a mistake, because it’s an opportunity to learn and grow, to become wiser. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and isn’t for most.

I’ve been undergoing a lot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the process of changing your thoughts and beliefs in order to change how you feel. A lot of it is writing. It’s writing down your flawed views and rewriting them with more logic. This is effective. But I need to take things a step further. I need to take action. I need to see to believe. How can you change your own beliefs when you don’t even trust the logic that you’re writing down?

You can’t. The only way to do it is to challenge your logic. Somewhere deep down, I believe I need my blackberry, and I’m scared not to have it. It represents my social world, my praise, the people who care. It represents my knowledge and my status. It’s a tool that I’ve become dependent on. Without it, I’m afraid I won’t be able to take care of myself or get by…I won’t have the people who can help me close at hand.

Once again, this may not be the same for everyone, but technology has made me a tad emotionally weak. I’m unable to do things or learn things on my own because it does it for me. And I’m thinking perhaps it’s time for me to be aloof. Time to be the guy that doesn’t pick up his phone on the first ring, each time every time, but the guy who takes a while to get back to you because he’s busy, or just plain making time for himself. Why does the phone NEED to be answered when it rings? Why should my life revolve around the needs of the entire world that is packed into my mobile device?

And one of the reasons this change ultimately needs to take place is because of my On And Off Again Best Friend (OAOA). My First Internet Enemy also stated how I shouldn’t be going after someone who isn’t sure if they want to be with me, or even want me around. I shouldn’t have to prove to them I’m worth it or convince them to stick around. They should just want to. And the longer my phone is on me and she doesn’t respond, the worse I feel. So if it’s not on me, and I become less connected to it, I have a feeling I’ll become less connected to her and the idea that I need another human being (and their praise) to be happy. I spent 8 years…EIGHT FREAKIN’ YEARS… trying to convince someone who once said she loved me that we should be together always. It’s been 5 months, long months, with OAOA. It hit me this morning that I’m not going to let myself go a day longer. It will NOT be eight years again. Not even close.

It’s about time I challenged my logic and beliefs instead of questioning them. It’s about time I actually faced my fears instead of just observing them. I know there are an infinite amount of ways to view the world. And I swear by myself to see it in at least ONE other way than the way I’ve been seeing it for the greater part of my life.

I may need to invest in a watch, though. My blackberry was the only thing that told me the time…

-Spontaneous K