Most of the time we talk about the importance of quality connections…but this time let’s talk about the opposite – intentional disengagement. A little over a year ago I wrote about the positive aspects of taking time to be contemplative, and temporarily detaching from our outer world is a pathway to get there. How do you do it? Put down your phone, close up your laptop, sit in your favorite chair. Pick a place in your home where you can be by yourself, turn off the TV, look out the window. Stay like this for 15 minutes.
Can you do it? I’ll bet you’ll find it hard to do. You may feel a little restless, like you’re wasting time you could be using to do other things. I don’t think we’re used to this sort of sitting still, not being in constant motion.
A colleague of mine tells me he never sits down to read books. When he does, he routinely falls asleep. Does this sound familiar? Did you ever try meditating? The number one problem in meditation is that people tend to fall asleep. How to stay awake and alert, when there is no outer stimulus to be focusing on? This is the problem!
So, let’s think about it…when it comes to attentiveness, perhaps there are three states we live in every day:
- awake and engaged
- awake and not engaged
- not awake
How many of us actually participate in all three? Most of us are probably pretty good at “awake and engaged” and “not awake”. I’m advocating that we practice “awake and not engaged” and get good at it too. Call it “creative detachment”, “strategic temporary withdrawal from the outer world”, or whatever seems to make sense to you. I think it’s a way of coming back to your inner core, getting refocused and rebalanced, reconnecting to the seat of your power, and getting ready for the next chapter of life which is right around the corner. When I trained in Aikido the sensei told me repeatedly that we’re either in balance or out of balance; there is no middle ground. Think of how different your life would be if you designed taking a break, recharging, and then resuming your activities each day, say in the middle of the day, around lunchtime. Clint Eastwood said in a recent interview that he meditates 20 minutes every day, and it’s changed his life for the better. He indicates feeling more patient, peaceful, and available to others. I’m not advocating that we all should take up meditation, I’m simply noting it as one mechanism that some folks employ for creatively disengaging.
There are parallels to this in many arenas of life. Flight crews have mandatory rest periods after a certain number of hours in the air, during which time they cannot be flying. Most of us work for five days, then take two days off. Sunday was originally designed as a “day of rest”. However, the demands of our world can keep us going non-stop for days on end, so we have to get good at architecting our own “withdrawal times” and not wait for the demands to ease up…because they might not.
Every significant life problem has at it’s root at least one foundational reason why it exists. Discover that reason and you can really make headway toward resolving the problem. Last week I was reading an excellent article in the November 7 edition of Time Magazine about “Anxiety, Depression and the American Adolescent” by Susanna Schrobsdorff. Here’s an excerpt:
…being a teenager today is a draining full-time job that includes doing schoolwork, managing a social-media identity and fretting about career, climate change, sexism, racism – you name it. Every fight or slight is documented online for hours or days after the incident. It’s exhausting.
“We’re the first generation that cannot escape our problems at all”, says Faith-Ann (one of the teenagers interviewed). “We’re all like little volcanoes. We’re getting this constant pressure, from our phones, from our relationships, from the way things are today”.
Steve Schneider, a counselor at Sheboygan South High School in southeastern Wisconsin, says the situation is like a scab that’s constantly being picked. “At no time do you get to remove yourself from it and get perspective”, he says.
If this doesn’t make a case for learning how to creatively disengage from the world, I don’t know what does. Turn off your phone, close the lid on your laptop. Put your feet up and gaze out the window. Watch the birds visiting the birdfeeder. Go for a quiet walk in your neighborhood park. Let yourself enjoy the sounds of nature, or the sounds of nothing in particular. My bet is you’ll come back refreshed, perhaps with some small but new perspectives on your life’s pathway. Give it a try…
Chase E. Kneeland, M.Div. LMFT 