I logged off of Social Media recently. I deleted the apps from my phone and headed out to the offline world, hoping to connect and reconnect. Here are a couple of (pretty obvious) things I learned (again) during this week away:

• I am addicted. I didn’t realize how often I was mindlessly scrolling during the in-between-moments every day. The first few days I found myself instinctively picking up my phone to scroll when I had 2 minutes before a meeting or when I had even just a few moments of nothing going on.
  • Boredom is good. Social media has kept me from being bored with its endless feeds of content. Without this habit to keep me occupied, I noticed more. I paid attention more, and in a more focused way to my family, where I physically was and to all the rest that is right around me all the time, but I too often miss.
  • As Walter Benjamin once said: “Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places—the activities that are intimately associated with boredom—are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well.”¹
• I am alright. It will be alright. At the beginning of this fast from social media, I worried that I would miss something big. I was sure that I would miss a friend’s major milestone (new job, baby, birthday, etc.). Or I would miss some big piece of news that was time-sensitive (like a government shutdown, for instance). Or I would just be disconnected in some irreparable way.
  • But after a week away, the posts are still there. The milestones can still be celebrated. The news still found its way to me, maybe even with less bias and rancor than when I found it on Facebook and Instagram.
  • What was different, what is different, is that I was actually more connected afterwards, not less. That is one of those obvious truths that I needed to be reminded of.
    • During this week away, I regularly visited events at 2 neighboring churches and went to a conference in Charlotte. The offline connection (which is a 21st century way of saying, hanging out with people “IRL” — “In Real Life”) is so much better.
    • Sure, there were more awkward moments (that’s my fault, I’m sure!) than connecting online. Yes, real life connecting, in-person connecting can be harder (seeing people I didn’t really want to see, having conversations I didn’t mean to have, being around folks who are fully human and messy just like me).
    • The upside of being offline was that I had more energy, desire and space to be fully with everyone I met in real life.
• People are a gift. This may be obvious to you, or maybe you completely disagree. But just 7 days offline I remembered and felt what Thomas Merton once described on a trip to the market (this is a long quote, but hang in there — it is worth it!):
  • “I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world…
  • This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God [God’s self] became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
  • Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”²
• Lastly, I want to do this more often. I may not delete the apps or take complete weeks off, but I think I should take more time away. It is healthy, healing and part of becoming whole for me.
  • Can you help me with that? Can you reach out and go for a walk with me? Let’s go on a hike, or get coffee (or beer) or play a round of golf. Come over to the house and let’s play monster trucks with my son. Let’s get dinner. Let’s talk on the phone. Let’s do any of the thousands of things we can do to be together. For each other. With each other. Connected in real life.

This time away, short as it was, reminded me that we belong to each other. We have to. In all of our messiness, in all of our disagreements (which are real and we should talk about those too), we belong with, for and to each other. In real life (IRL).

Social media is a great tool but the purpose of social media at its core is not really to connect us. We are the product. And sometimes, that’s OK. I get a kick out of watching the funny TV Anchor bloopers. I laugh really hard while watching compilations of little kids nailing their dads with all sorts of things. I cry when I watch the stories of kindness, bravery and compassion. Social media isn’t all bad. But it’s not all good, for me, either.

So I want to be more present, IRL. I want to be more alive, IRL. I want to connect more, IRL. I want to be with beautifully flawed people (just like me), IRL. I want all of the “real life” mess and marvels. I want the really real love and surprise and joy and even the pain that comes with this human thing. I am committed, again, to being with you and for you and right beside you. In. Real. Life. Because real life is precious. Fragile. Short. A gift.

Grace & Peace, Cole

1. Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 91. ↩︎
2. Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 140–142. ↩︎