Yes, Another Pause

Yes, Another Pause

    They will once again be a pause of about a week for me, a time to regroup and dream once again, that period of thoughts being set free like a set of balloons on a windy afternoon, letting them scatter in some crazy unplanned pattern.  We all need to do that every now and then, to step off of the merry-go-round of routine and work and home and whatever.  For most of us, a simple vacation is the trick, whether you're waited on hand and foot on a cruise or at a fancy resort, gobbling down all the food in excess and not choking (that is, until you arrive home and see the bill) or simply fading away to a simple cabin somewhere in the country  (yes, they still exist such as in Kokee State Park and the lodges there in Kauai, Hawaii) where once night falls it becomes you and the night sky and little else (a camping trip accomplishes much the same thing).

    In his book Running With the Pack, author Mark Rowlands writes about this escaping of thoughts, something he hits only after a certain point of running.  Think too hard and those thoughts won't come (think writer's block or as mentioned in an earlier post, struggling to remember who sang that song); says author Rowlands: ...people will sometimes ask me what I think about when I run.  It's a reasonable question...but nonetheless, the wrong one.  The question betrays a lack of understanding of what the run does.  Any answers I could give would be pretty boring...More generally, what I think will reflect what is going on in my life before the run begins.  If I am happy, I shall think happy thoughts; if I am sad, I shall think sad ones.  Thinking carries too much of me in it; too much of the stench of my life, its concerns and preoccupations...If I am thinking at all when I run, this is a sign of a run gone wrong -- or at least, of a run that has not yet gone right.  The run does not yet have me in its grip.  I am not yet in the heartbeat of the run; the rhythm of the run has not yet done its hypnotic work.  On every long run that has gone right, there comes a point where thinking stops and thoughts begin.  Sometimes these are worthless, but sometimes they are not.

    All of this is not the same as disconnecting from social interaction, which seems to be a growing trend according to four books reviewed by Jacob Weisberg in The New York Review of Books.  In his article titled We Are Hopelessly Hooked, he mentions some rather concerning data usage pulled from those books: Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices, according to the research firm eMarketer...Three quarters of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds say that they reach for their phones immediately upon waking up in the morning.  Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day—an average of every 4.3 minutes—according to a UK study...In a 2015 Pew survey, 70 percent of respondents said their phones made them feel freer, while 30 percent said they felt like a leash.  Nearly half of eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds said they used their phones to “avoid others around you.”...Some of Silicon Valley’s most successful app designers are alumni of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, a branch of the university’s Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute.  The lab was founded in 1998 by B.J. Fogg, whose graduate work “used methods from experimental psychology to demonstrate that computers can change people’s thoughts and behaviors in predictable ways,” according to the center’s website.  One of Fogg’s students, Nir Eyal, offers a practical guide in his book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.  A former game designer and professor of “applied consumer psychology” at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Eyal explains why applications like Facebook are so effective.  A successful app, he writes, creates a “persistent routine” or behavioral loop.  The app both triggers a need and provides the momentary solution to it.  “Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation,” he writes...For US users of Facebook, the average “time spent” figure is an extraordinary forty minutes a day.  What compels this level of immersion?  As Eyal writes, Facebook’s trigger is FOMO, fear of missing out.  The social network relieves this apprehension with feelings of connectedness and validation, allowing users to summon recognition.  On Facebook, one asserts one’s social status and quantifies its increase through numbers of likes, comments, and friends.  According to Eyal, checking in delivers a hit of dopamine to the brain, along with the craving for another hit.  The designers are applying basic slot machine psychology.  The variability of the “reward”—what you get when you check in—is crucial to the enthrallment.  Eyal thinks the photo-sharing app Instagram is an even itchier trigger. (not that long ago, Facebook purchased Instagram)

    Slot machines or camping or texting?  All take us away to another, almost mindless, place.  But as author Rowlands points out, the thinking and escaping are not the same as having thoughts.  Perhaps it is the same as dreaming or having a bit too much to drink or smoke or whatever at a party...upon awakening (or recovering), we can remember little, despite thinking earlier that we had solved the world's problems or had come up with the world's best invention.  Those, too, are likely not "thoughts," at least not how I'm picturing them.  Thoughts seem to come out of nowhere, sometimes in the middle of a group discussion, sometimes just from walking and seeing something in a window, and sometimes from just being in bed and thinking, well, nothing.  The point is, sometimes we need those thoughts.  They seem to be there but are as elusive as neutrinos, the millions and billions of them sailing by us every second but somehow proving difficult to catch and or put into use.  Or perhaps they are not evading us at all; perhaps they are all entering us in full and we are merely storing them unaware, wondering what the heck happened to them?...where did I put that key to unlock them all and why did I lock them up anyway? 

    Hmmm, what a long personal yakking for just trying to say there will be a pause in these posts.  I'll be out searching for that key...or not.  Maybe I'll dive into a few more books, or watch a few mindless movies, or vacuum or sit on the couch and stare.  There are no plans...just a brief pause.  Maybe this is a good chance for your own self-reflection, your own search for the key if there is one.  You may just find that as in Harry Potter's Platform 9 and three-quarters, there is no wall, no jail, no holding cell.  Just a bunch of thoughts...