La Voz de Galicia – August 23, 2024 →
Sometimes, when I decide that I’m going to do nothing more than what I had planned to do (like pulling weeds from the garden or writing this column), a myriad of things suddenly appear that, for some reason, need to be taken care of right at that moment (like doing the laundry or emptying that drawer full of junk). And even though I’m fully aware that I’m doing exactly the opposite of what I had intended, I keep taking on these tasks until I have almost no time left to complete the job I promised myself I would do that morning.
Then I think that at least I managed not to look at my phone, even though it’s right there next to me, constantly vying for my attention. And I feel good about not having succumbed to its temptation, so I glance at it, just out of the corner of my eye, and see that a WhatsApp message has come in. I check the message, and that’s it, I’m already hooked. From the message, I move on to the newspaper headlines, from the newspaper to my email, from email to Instagram, and I keep going until I have almost no time left to finish the job I promised myself I would do that morning.
And that’s when I start thinking about the idea of disconnecting, not because it’s summer (since for many people, summer means nothing more than heat and exhaustion), but because every day it becomes harder to disconnect from this existence of ours that revolves around doing for the sake of doing. Every day it’s harder to see people sitting in a park or at a café without looking at their phones; it’s harder to focus on just one thing for an extended period of time… And every day I’m more aware that life passes by in those idle moments, and that we, busy with nothing in particular, have to make the effort not to let it pass by like that, not to let the present slip through our fingers…
