Happiness In The Digital Age
Is it possible to find true happiness today? With our lives so connected to plugged in entities and so little human contact necessary for getting the job done, where does our inner worth end up? It’s too simple to get lost in the digital offerings at our fingertips. Online games, TV shows, and phones that think more than we do have the potential to rob us of our individuality and our humanness.
Living in an electronically numbed world is a bit like kicking the ATV tires but refusing to ever get on the ATV for a wild ride. The rush of the ride is well worth the effort, but sometimes the tire kick just seems easier.
We are bogged down with decisions to make on a daily basis. Should we look into our spiritual beliefs? Should we make money online? Should we call a family member that we haven’t seen or talked to in years? Should we extend ourselves and put in the effort? Or maybe we can just turn on the TV and live through someone else’s life for awhile.
Every day we grab our laptop computer bags and our cell phones that are still thinking too hard for our comfort and we head off to another digitized day. Yet we are so quick to allow the human element slip right by us. We are prone to electronics because we don’t have to interact on an emotional level.
Can we still be truly happy despite our numbed experiences? We can witness so much via the internet and never have to talk to a soul about what we experienced. Do we end up giving into the digital age and forgetting that we can be warm, true, human, and real despite our dependence on electronic equipment? We are still very much human under the layers of binary code.
Remember how good it feels to love someone while you’re both laughing? Remember how good it feels to eat at the dining room table and talk rather than eat in front of the TV after a long day in front of the computer? Remember how easy it is to love a dog or play a game of checkers with a child?
Some of us have stopped caring because we are afraid of potential pain. There is more pain in the human element than there is in the electronic element. But there is happiness ten fold in the human element as well. The more we offer our hearts to each other the happier we actually become.