MONDAYS are important to me because that is when deadlines beat at my doorstep and ring louder than my neighbor’s alarm clock But last Monday, I disconnected or rather, got disconnected from anything digital in the current world and reaped its benefits.
Along with a friend, we travelled to a town West of Davao Oriental and I found myself looking at a part of the Pacific Ocean. Should I have been with my smartphone, I would asked Google who would tell me where I am reminding me twice too many that I had always been an idiot with maps. I was standing on a cliff that dropped into the ocean when I realized that whether it was the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean or Aegean Sea that I was looking at, I would not have known. All oceans look the same at some point -- water, clouds, waves and all.
Then the mind works. The eyes look for the contrasts in the horizon and pay attention to the nuances where the land meets the water, how the rocks in the shore have been shaped by the sea. The nose filters the smell the breeze brings --- ours was the smell of burning leaves under the tall coconut trees lining the shore. Then the bare feet notice the fine white sand in one area, black pebble stones in another, and fine black sand where the rented house stood. Should I have been with my phone, I would have just snapped away at each scene unmindful of the feel of the polished drift wood we sat on while gazing at the auburn sunset.
Because we were disconnected, we reconnected through conversations at the dining table, by the bedside, while walking barefoot on the shore. We remembered songs and sang the parts that touched us. Should we have been connected, we would have swiped to open Spotify. We talked about movies and which scene we considered well directed and acted out each scene without the help of YouTube or Netflix. The sand was our canvass to show the routes that we took in our previous travels in other places while Waze and Google miserably rested in between our towels and swimsuits. When the waves washed away our temporary sketches, we picked up the stones to summon memories and held longer to the smooth pieces of memories that were most significant. We had no use for GIFs or memes.
We made do with whatever food we brought with us and cooked according to how we wanted our food to taste. It was DIY without instructions from Gordon, Anthony, or the barefoot contessa. Who’d care if we coated fried chicken with toasted garlic and crushed peanuts? It was delicious.
But we had to go back to the world -- the digitally connected world where Mark Zuckerberg is unceremoniously invited to every meal, trip, argument, mood swing, meetings, and yes, bedroom trysts. When asked, Mark Z would not tell the US Congress the name of the hotel where he was staying and rightly so. It’s called privacy and even in this consuming digital world, humans have not lost that option. Big Brother can be shut off. Just unplug.