Social media fast

Mind map of the digital age

Fasting, lent, is an essential part of my religious tradition. There are longer and shorter periods of fasting in a year. The main idea - and remember, I am not a theologian - is to give up the things, ideas, doings that trap you in your daily life. From the religious point of view, you just take more time to pray, to repent, to be with your loved ones, to do good, to give alms and to show hospitality, because, as the story goes, you´ll never know, if your visitors prove to be angels. But belive me, that repenting is the tricky part.

After all, this kind of fasting is not so much about food. No fussing around wondering dos and don´ts. There is of course that stuff with milk, eggs, cream, meat .... But anyhow, who wants to eat meat these days when one food scandal is following the other. So 40 days without meat now and then doesn´t make such a big difference in our daily life. But there is a kind of degrowth of meals at our house during the lent.

This lent I am going to start now is a bit different. My days of work end up being 12 hours nowadays, so I simply do need more time. Social media fast may be the way to go. I have a feeling, that this hyperlinked, or at least linked,  life of mine takes a lot of my time. And I could spend it on some other way too.  I could be reading, not the text on the screen  but real books, painting instead of just tuning my photos on my computer, singing and not just watching YouTube videos, though I usually sing along, and I really don´t need to be "branding" myself on Facebook every day, or actually repeatedly during the day. It is fun but ....

It may sound odd, but I also have to learn myself to concentrate on things in a new way, to have  time for meditation and to see what is to become out of it. I just have to put a kibosh on the stream of overwhelming ideas, images, links and time spent on the computer. My computer is a good servant but a bad master.

It is said, that you shouldn´t tell anyone about your fasting, but this time I did an exception. See you at easter holidays.