Here I am writing about the topic which is hard to imagine and daunting to follow. This differs from your travel in mountains. Remembering those travel days, you cannot say, “I have done that”.
This should be like a day at your home, without an internet.
Thinking about it, I realized that preparation is a must for this day. Let us have a look.
· The very first thing is the change in WhatsApp status the night before- “I am treating myself with a day without internet. Spare me today”
· My day starts at 6am. During the usual business in the loo, I browse something or the other. Watching Sadhguru video on Facebook is one of the common things along with checking stuff like- who contacted me, sent me dms, whatsapped me. But on this day, I have to sit in silence and brood with nothing to do in the loo. Maybe I would keep some paperback already for this day.
· My next activity is online yoga. Ok, so this is manageable, I can do it myself. With the practice of some years, I can do this at least for a day without peeking at online videos.
· And then what about office-This is a straightforward decision, it has to be a weekend.
· No internet on the weekend means, I cannot watch Netflix, Prime, cannot go out- “Oh, I can’t travel without Google maps” Yes that’s true, I don’t remember routes, and suffer with this do-not-remember-route-syndrome. But I can read like usual days. Only thing would be to purchase paperbacks or download kindle well before the day.
· Ok, I can spend 2-3 hours talking to long-lost friends, but some of them are only connected on Facebook...my goodness, I don’t even have their numbers. Checked it now and found some numbers so not 2-3 hours, but manageable.
· Next could be grocery shopping at a nearby store. Yes, that is cool.
· Ok, I can watch a movie on a cable T.V, if I get lucky.
· I can stretch my yoga time a bit, can sit silently, and meditate for some extra time.
· Blogging for the entire month looks to be a good idea, or writing for my next book...ok, only a page not more than that. Yeah, I often suffer from writer’s block.
Up till here it is about managing daily stuff, now let us look at it with a different perspective-
So this is my time, and I know am absolutely going to love it. I am an introvert- you know, spending time with myself and loved ones without caring about the judgmental eyes of social media is going to be great.
In my free time, I will stand in my balcony, listen to those tiny tots playing in the courtyard, or maybe try to identify the trees around. The flowers I never paid attention to, or the sweeper who cleans that ground every day- I will talk to him. I don’t really know who lives around my place, there are so many people who walk daily, maybe I will talk to few welcoming people. I will talk at length to my mother and not just a 4-5 minute conversation.
Cooking myself would also be good. Let me think, oh. But the online recipes will not be there. So that brings me down to two options- go to a nearby restaurant or prepare a simple meal at home.
Writing all this, I understood how dependent I am on internet. It doesn’t let you remember or achieve perfection in many such things. This easy availability of information has made our brains empty and dumb. Nobody needs to remember any process, nobody needs to store papers, documents or maps. All of this hard work that our fathers had done has gone away, giving room in our brain for other interesting things, but only if we realize it. Today the educated is one who knows how to use a search engine efficiently.
Writing this is giving me ideas I was unaware at the beginning. At this point of time, I feel like a slave to the internet. I cannot go out, cannot make wonderful dishes, do not have phone numbers of my long-lost friends, cannot attend yoga class, cannot buy books without internet. My physical interaction with people is reducing day by day and that would slowly make me and all of us less emotional and less empathetic towards people.
Opting to write about this is proving good as at the end, I realize my dependency on internet. Time has now come to plan this day.
At least, I would prepare myself from that potential future-cyberattack to my online accounts that could keep my access away for days, and not just a single day.
And at the end, it would be good to see the life from a perspective different from the life dependent on internet.
