It is all in the mind.
We say it. We know it. Yet we forget.
Lessons from the chores
When I squat in front of the washing machine, collecting all the moist laundry from the floor, turning the insides out on the jeans, and flipping every sock the other way, more often than not, I do not feel annoyed. Why would I? I take a sock, knowing that a child of mine, a boyfriend of one of my daughters, a niece, or a friend (my husband never wears socks) was busy thinking about something else, or laughing, or distracted, when I peel off the sock, and I care. I reverse it, so the stained underside comes clean out of the washing machine, and I feel the love.
I squat, stretching my back, smiling, and reach for another sock to turn the right side out. What a privilege to have so many people to love in my life; how lovely it is that they love each other.
And how lovely they all have socks.
The good thing is that no one is commanding me to do it; none of our lives depend on it. I have, over the years, sometimes felt trapped, and the urgency of life with smaller children is different in many ways, but still, this is a commitment and a choice, not a prison, not a trap, not a burden.
I voluntarily and with pleasure and a smile squat to load the washing machine, sending a smile to my grandmother, who had to wash in a massive pot on her stove in her kitchen in Copenhagen, rinse in the bathtub, wring by hand and carry the wet laundry to the attic to hang. She is smiling back from her heavens, leaning on a soft cloud, reading poems and stirring her G&T.
When I collect the little cardboard rolls from inside the toilet paper, I realise how privileged I feel, like a Chosen One, to be almost the only person with that special job. I fold and put it in the recycling.
And I smile.
I have learned the hard lessons on how you can ruin your own life. I have seen self-victimisation destroy precious hours. I know how it feels to be around self-righteous people. I am in no way perfect; I make a lot of mistakes.
But honestly.
I squat in front of the washing machine, and I smile, feeling the love. Knowing I am free not to do it, knowing no one would take me to court. Knowing I do this from a point of love, and the point of love is where I want to start all my actions, sending out a vibe and bettering the world. When I can no longer do that, I wish I could say I always stop and breathe.
Sometimes I do.
Sometimes I get annoyed first.
It is not worth it.
Remembering love is a unique, greatest of all, overwhelming element of life, the fuel and the carrier and the point of it all, can save us from many a side-tracked thought, sparking an unnecessary and irrelevant negative emotion.
So we flow. From squatting in front of the washing machine, to recycling toilet paper rolls, to writing blog posts.
The dynamic and interesting truth about this is to be found somewhere in the mix of on the one side knowing we are free, and things we do are voluntary based on commitment and values, and on the other side tapping into humility. Gratefully kneeling to thank God, while we do our part: for the moments we have, the love we get to participate in, for a meaningful life, for the beauty.
It is both. The beauty is in the mix of freedom and humility. Just forget about logic, it is not relevant.
Observing screen-time
Over the past few years, I have been pondering the concerns surrounding our use of smartphones, tablets, and computers. There is a lot of debate on this issue, with books being published and research conducted. I am unsure where to land my opinions, and I am also unsure if it is right to even have an opinion.
One is not enough.
Even landing several would be too little. We have to keep thinking about this, staying aware, this is something complex, something new, something potentially super-great AND poetentially super-destructive. At the same time.
We need the dynamic of complexity, the open-mindedness of not really knowing what to think, and the observing point of view. Fear will not help us get to anywhere we want to be, but it will help us avoid getting stuck.
So I observe.
I observe the fear, the worries. I observe the behaviour, the discourse, the emotion, and the use.
Here are the latest reflections on the topic. It is a journey to figure it out, a complex and contextual thing to understand, wrapped in the fabric of what life is, in both new and old ways. The most important thing to do is to keep thinking about it, not letting go of observation, reflection, mindful life design, and conscious choices.
A take on the different elements of what we do with the phones and computers
Practically, we can organise our lives, and even this, we can get lost in it, if we are not mindful. At the same time, there is nothing more amazing than the organising tools: The calendars, the maps, the bank apps, the to-do lists, the habit trackers, the workout planners, the meal-prep apps, the cookbooks.
A lot of us work to make money from our computers. This is its own story.
We can reach out to the tool to learn all kinds of things, but this too is becoming harder and harder if we do not learn to stay undistracted in our work/study efforts. This is the same problem for both working and studying.
We can play. All kinds of games.
I do not agree with the general distinction between working, studying and playing, except it makes historical sense, and maybe purpose-wise, there is a truth to it. Am I doing this to make money, to pass exams/learn a skill or a discipline or to enjoy exploring a game? In all three cases, we learn, and in all three cases, we could have fun, if we apply the right mindset of freedom/humility.
And we can communicate. From one-to-one chatting on texting apps to writing books, creating video-based channels, blogs, staying tuned in groups, and participating in huge social media platforms - all of this is communication in one way or the other. Unfortunately, most people take more than they give, paying the price of loneliness, both for themselves and for the few contributors.
So, why do we reach out for the screen?
Stating the obvious, there are many reasons we reach out for electronic devices.
Emotionally, we can run and hide behind entertainment, drowning or postponing what we feel by turning to something that distracts the mind. This something can be better or worse.
We can also have clear objectives: study because we want to learn, work because we want to make a difference, play because we want to have fun, text because we want community, and so on.
The complicated element is that we do not always know. Most of us do not have a habit of stopping to think about why we do the things we do, and especially the smartphone has a tendency to find its way back into our hands and minds, without conscious decisions. I see how this happens, how we fool ourselves, and how it creates frustration and problems. The ease of stimulating moments, and the very tempting ease of doing something that on the surface seems meaningful, with a smartphone in hand. This behaviour is very tempting, and often the price is invisible.
Sugata Mitra has a point when he basically said, children are capable of learning anything without any teachers or teaching if they have access to the internet, but NOT IF THEY ARE ALONE. Only in groups of 3-4 (at least), this magic happens.
And the screens tend to cut us off from other people.
Except when they don’t. This is one of the nuances we need to bear in mind.
When I was a child, it was the TV taking the same role as “screens” do these days. My mom called it the coma box; people talked about how it rots our brains. However, in my opinion, the real problems arose when we left the 80s, people had more money, and homes had more than one TV. When I was little, a home had only one TV, and watching was a shared experience.
New problems started to happen when people could afford more than one TV. Sure, it did solve some problems, too. Things are always complex. In my opinion, the loss of having to share, cutting back on the ability to share, patience, getting to know each other, learning to take turns, negotiating in a respectful and democratic way, and most hurt was the community. Shared moments, the feeling of belonging. If you get to cuddle on the sofa with a blanket and a few loved ones, does it really matter what is on the screen?
Observing, one of the things I see is how it can be a lot of fun and create amazing moments and memories when using the tools together. My daughter and my nieces just wrote a song and cut a video to go with it this week, flipping through photos of shared vacations, laughing, rhyming, singing, dancing, recording, and laughing more.
It is simply too narrow to talk about “screen-time” or “watching screen”. I see teens losing hours of their lives and a lot of self-esteem to YouTube Shorts (or the like), and I see small kids learning amazing skills like gymnastics, languages, or magic tricks from the same platform, looking, copying, listening, rehearsing, and stubbornly going on and on until they have it.
So, how do we navigate?
We may need to challenge the mainstream discourse, as there is something wrong with it. The fear mindset is prevalent, and the narrow idea that the device itself is the problem is a common misconception.
We have to open our perspectives. The fear might point to something we want to avoid. But really, what is it? Sometimes the mainstream discourse seems to just like the fear-based conversation. What are we afraid of? That is the interesting question. And does the logic hold?
This is the point where the concept of opportunity cost comes into play, and we should pay attention.
It is clear that running from or postponing emotion in most cases is a bad decision, a waste of time, and just enlarges the problem. This is stating the obvious. It is also clear that algorithm-based short-format “entertainment” is tricking us into allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed yet understimulated for hours and hours of our lives, and this is better avoided.
However, even when we do something useful, we must pause and reflect. Is it truly useful, or are we fooling ourselves, because it looks useful and feels good? It is so easy to feel we are doing something, making a difference, getting a grib on this wierd life, when using the organizing apps, but if we do not stop to think aobut our values, our goals, the points of it all - and weather it is worth the time put in. weather it is contributing enough to allow us to lead better lives, or just tricing the mind for a while.
Lastly, the work, study, and play done on computers, tablets, and phones - is there an opportunity cost worth thinking about? In our family, we often discuss the importance of balance. We wonder if we are spending enough time at art museums, in conversations, around bonfires, on walks, in kitchens, around dinner tables, at wine bars, at concerts, around board games, with musical instruments, or engaging in crafts and sports. The math is sometimes hard to see, as a late-night gamer looks almost for free, while everyone else is sleeping. But does this mean I am too tired to participate in the hike/board game/cooking/conversation tomorrow? And is this just today, or is it a consistent thing? And am I okay with that for this time in my life?
With smaller children, there is the whole 'how and when to stop' question, and I have to give this another text, all to itself, as this is a long, long story. For now, I will ignore this problem and assume we can solve it, landing on the conclusion: it is a complex situation, and we need to use our brainpower.
So, the most important red flag is: Can we still use our brainpower, or have we lost the ability to focus, clear our minds, and simply be? Do we need to distract ourselves all the time, do we need ot be entertained, ahve we fooled ourselves to think we are wasting our time, if we are staring at the horizon while waiting for someone to run back to get a raincoat (or whatever short moment unexepcted handed to us, where we would most often flip out the phoen and solve a random task)?
The brain is working at its best when it has the ability to be cleared, empty, ready to think: Thinking being processing information. If we load too much and have our minds full of half-eaten info, thousands of pictures and videos, the brain can not work its magic.
This is the most expensive opportunity cost.
This is the reason we need to stop and think.
Stop.
Think.
Think in community. Talk and feel. Talk about feelings. Feel and talk about values. Opportunities. Mechanisms. Goals. Meaningfulness. Efficiency.
Love.
The reason I hardly post on social media is that I truly think it is becoming toxic. It grabs our minds with things we do not need, fills our heads with things we need to process, and distracts our clear focus with little things that are not actually relevant.
I want to squat in front of the washing machine with nothing on my mind, so I notice the love I feel in my heart when I turn the outside back out on a sock, and another sock, and another. I want to spend an hour writing about these things because I am convinced too many people struggle to find a way.
And I want to appeal for a conversation. I hope this flow-of-mind text has sparked some thoughts or raised new questions. What do you think? Where do you go? Do you have rules for screen time for your children or teens, or yourself? Do you feel you are wasting your time? Do you notice how it makes you feel when watching a movie versus reading a book? Is it different to read a book on the computer versus on an e-reader, versus in a book made of paper?
Are you worried? Do you have clear values and some actual goals for the coming time? Do you feel you can control and prioritise your time, flowing through your days in a way that makes sense? Is there anything you would want to change, and what would that change look like? And is it hard to do it? Where is the frustration? Where is the joy?
Please let me know in the comment section, as we did in the good old days, or send an email if you prefer privacy.
This needs more talking about.
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