Choosing Peace— Words on social media.

Hi, I’m Peta. I haven’t been on Instagram in 2 weeks *applause*. 

(This entry was written weeks before publishing. I have had the Instagram app deleted from my phone for most of the month, except for a few quick ‘post and ghost’ situations). I intend to keep it this way. I downloaded it and logged in briefly before coming in to edit this and it felt like drinking from a fire hose.

So much information.

So fast.

How much of it do I really need?

How much of it can I truly metabolise? 

These words below are by Johann Hari, quoting Sane Lehmann in his book titled Stolen Focus. 

“But we told ourselves we could have the massive expansion in the amount of information we’re exposed to, and the speed at which it hits us, with no costs. This is a delusion: ‘It becomes exhausting’. More importantly, Sune said, ‘What we are sacrificing is depth in all sorts of dimensions… Depth takes time. And depth takes reflection. If you have to keep up with everything and send emails all the time, there’s no time to reach depth. Depth connected to your work in relationships also takes time. It takes energy. It takes long timespans. And it takes commitment. It takes attention, right? All these things that require depth are suffering. It’s pulling us more and more up onto the surface.” 

I’ve been reading ‘Stolen Focus’ by Johann Hari. You’ve likely heard of it as I think it’s a big time best seller. My friend Sarah recommended it to me a few months back. I got the audio version because I knew I’d get to it faster. She laughed and said something along the lines of … “That’s kind of the whole point of the book. Get the actual hard copy.” So I did.