i unplugged from twitter, blogging, text messaging, & phone calls for 5 days
my brother asked me to turn my phone off completely, & i would have if i could have updated my fantasy football team another way
lame
i know
believe me
my wife reminded me
about 15 thowzo times
either way, it was a great experience and i highly recommend it for those who are very plugged in
interesting comment from a blog post a couple of days ago was that even with increased communication and connection via the internet, twitter, blogging, facebook, etc…people today are more lonely
this makes very much sense to me
(healthy) relationships destroy loneliness
Jesus destroys loneliness
the world promotes loneliness
why?
so that you can be as miserable as the next person
so that another person can think of an idea on how to make you lonely so that they can pounce on a money-making opportunity to get you out of your loneliness that in reality only makes you more lonely so that you rely more heavily on the anti-whatever you are buying into
in reality, i don’t know
but i have a lot of theories
also in reality, i do know that God created a hole inside of us that only He can fill
as human beings, we will try anything
we have heard that (healthy) relationships help create intimacy & meaning so we sign on to facebook, get 2,419 friends, follow their status updates every six to seven minutes, and believe we are pursuing that intimacy & meaning
how could we not?? 2,419 friends?? most people only have like two or three really good ones…
this has happened in twitter, in blogging, in myspace, in the internet, and in things we haven’t even experienced yet
the problem?
all of the time you are spending checking up on everybody else’s facebook you are doing two things:
1) investing time into (99% of the time) zero fruit bearing relationships
2) taking time from a potentially very fruitful relationship away in the process
if you are sitting with another person in the same room, car, whatever & checking these updates, you are more than likely successfully completing both steps
i am guilty
i realized this over the semi-unplugged extended weekend
instead of investing my time into finding out what who updated their profile in the last 15 minutes, i was forced to invest it into somebody who i have an extremely healthy relationship with-wife, mom, dad, brother, aunt, uncle, grandfather, grandmother
and it was a beautiful thing
it made me realize how much more filling, challenging, & beneficial the growth-oriented (healthy) relationships are
AND
the amount i get out is directly proportional to the amount i put in
how do you make sure you don’t get sucked in to being too plugged in?
ltlo
rlowenfield
samuel miles
