Breathe…
Being older than dirt, I come from a time before portable phones and “apps.” So I am not a full-fledged user of these things. Compared to the rest of the planet, I merely dabble.
But still, I can see that today’s technology has us measuring ourselves constantly—against normative data, against ourselves, and against each other. How many steps did I walk today? How many steps should I walk today? How did I sleep? Did my heart flutter? Why am I not on the beach like Susie or in Paris like Frank? Is it time to drink water? Time to sit? Time to stand up? Time to pass gas?
Modern people download apps to keep themselves healthy, motivated, systemized, informed. Apps that appraise our physical well-being, and apps that offer a peephole into other mortals’ worlds against which we can measure our own self-worth.
If these apps cause guilt, shame, envy, or disappointment, we can download more apps to lower stress—some guided meditations or breathing exercises.
We’re a hop, skip and jump from our devices telling us when our clothes don’t match or we’re not wearing the appropriate underwear. If we’ve spent too little or too much time on the toilet.
My device lets me read the Washington Post any time I want—and unlike physical newspapers of old, it updates constantly, and even suggests stories that might, theoretically, be especially appropriate for me.
It recently offered an article telling me how to read more books. “Super readers” gave tips on how they read 250 or 300 books in a year. One tipster read 350 books last year and proposes to read 400 this year.
Excuse me? That’s more than one a day.
Now, if the goal is just to have a high book count, I can sit in the children’s section of the library and read a dozen a day. But to what end? I am an avid fan of reading. I read news online to stay informed. But I read books for enjoyment. I revel in them. I take my time, sometimes rereading a beautifully written paragraph several times just to thoroughly appreciate the language. I generally give a book a 50-page trial—if it hasn’t caught my attention by then, I toss it back to the library and get another one. Reading primarily to count the number of books you’ve finished misses the point.
As does counting steps—a popular self-improvement tool championed by our devices. I like to walk. With my dog. Or with a friend. On a pleasant day. It keeps my moving parts in working order and lifts my spirits. When not ambulating for enjoyment, I just walk as many steps as I need to carry me from point A to point B. I don’t need an app for that. And if, on my extended promenades, my motivation is step-counting rather than communing with my friend (whether human or canine), I’m missing the real beauty of my walk.
It’s disconcerting to think that people these days need an app to tell them what’s good for them every single moment of every day. If we, as a species, can’t breathe of our own accord, to the rhythm of our own choosing, we will soon miss the point of being human. Future generations might well develop an inborn digitized schedule that doesn’t allow anything to chance for eighty years—dictating when to eat/sleep/walk/talk/work. How many heartbeats. How many kisses.
I might be older than dirt, but I’m grateful I can breathe without using an app to tell me how.