If you are a Firefox/Safari/Opera/Chrome/IE8 user who finds anything that looks out of place, please contact me. If you are an IE6 user and you find something odd, please contact me with your complaint and be sure to attach the time machine with which I can travel back to 2002 and give a shit about your browser.

As I was sitting down at the computer I noticed my Twitter client had just updated. Someone retweeted an agreeable quote that I thought worthy of a retweet myself, others were having arguments that I rooted for and followed closely for ten minutes, but wouldn’t dare participate in. Such-and-such had just published a new blog post, so I headed over to their site and read that. While writing a comment, my phone vibrated and let out a little chime. Like some bizarre human variation of Pavlov’s dog, I reached for it, salivating at the prospect of whatever untold knowledge would be held within whatever message I’d just received.

And now… well, now I’m no closer to the life I want, no more intelligent than anyone else, no closer to finishing my projects and, to make matters worse, I have a disgustingly accurate and elaborate time line of the goings-on of the Gosselin house ingrained into my mind. Those are neurons I’ll likely never get back.

I’m no longer human. I’m a receptacle of pop culture nonsense, false feuds about health care, and whatever form of raging sensationalism the talking heads subject me to.

I don’t reflect any greater truth. I have not created anything of beauty. I have not served “the least of these.” I do not live a wholly remarkable life of passion and experience. I do not stand in awe of the vast star-dotted darkness outside my window and feel as small as I ought to feel. I’m not sure I remember what it is to feel.

Introspection and self-examination have been replaced by data and distraction — mental consumerism.

Life is spent looking while never seeing.

My eyes turn from one glowing rectangle to another. We are a society of far too many glowing rectangles. TVs, cell phones, laptops. I want to see an unchanging mass of chaos like the branches of a tree swaying predictably in a gentle wind or the veins of its leaves being climbed upon by a Lady Bug. And then, after a while, I don’t want to see anything. I want for the sun to vanish from the sky and for the tree to dim to a ghost of its former shape. I want to remember what it was like for day to be day and night to be night, work to be work and rest to be rest.

And most importantly, I want to find silence.

In all the 24 hour news stations, straight to my pocket emails, too-easily-initiated phone conversations, flooded feed readers, and trite Twitter updates, I lost whoever this person is I’m supposed to be.

Like a modern day Adam, I’ve exchanged my soul for knowledge. I’ve exchanged Truth for speculation and misinformation. How, I wonder, does someone break away from this kind of central societal notion, this need to have an opinion and to know everything about everything to make up for one’s utter mediocrity?

I’m better than this. We all are. Let’s stop giving value to the things which give us no value. Let’s stop listening to the stories and opinions of people who have taken risks to get in the limelight and start taking some risks of our own.

We are beautiful expressions of a greater purpose.