the art of living

life is happening offline, put your phone away

i. I’m sitting on my balcony in the wee hours of the morning. Legs crossed, spine straight, head high. A practice that’s become a ritual, an attempt to feel much larger than I’ve convinced myself I am. It’s peaceful, a lonesome activity soundtracked only by the gentle hums of a bird’s morning song and muted sirens blaring in the distance. I find it strangely comforting. The rest of the world is not yet awake and I am watching faint lights blink on as the sun peaks its way up, beaconing a new day. If you think about it too much it’s hard to call this moment anything less than magical. A moment of beauty I lay bare witness to. An experience gatekpt by my unwavering desire for solitude. A mundanity I’ve alchemized into a religion. My attendance at its service an act of prayer.

ii. Every Sunday I find myself wandering, my destination unknown, though I frequently end up at the park. Beneath a tree. Or on a bench. Perhaps on top of a towel sunbathing in the field, avoiding lustful eyes. I always pack light, just the bare essentials: headphones, a book, my phone, a snack. I take off my headphones and turn my phone on do not disturb. Laughter sails across the grass in all directions— babies cry, dogs bark, girls giggle, boys play; the many humdrum sounds of human life happening around me. Despite my silence, the world has never been louder, and I revel in the bedspread of banality. I spend time reading, envisaging an entire fictional world in my head, letting the hum of ordinary life slip away, plunging myself head first into the imagination of another’s words, secretly envious of their perfectly crafted run-on sentences and their ability to capture the absurdity of the human experience. Other times I sit and listen to jazz, or hip-hop, or midwest emo. If I’m feeling particularly inclined to immersion I’ll allow myself to surrender to the music the group beside me’s speaker is blaring, giving into a tracklist of top 40s hits and yacht rock. My silence feels anything but quiet. I can spend hours people-watching, taking it all in, avoiding the descent home to an empty house. Silence spent living in the world always feels better than silence spent in desolation.

iii. It’s 3am and I’m sitting on the street curb in the neighbourhood I spent my early 20s menacing around in. The street is usually full of children biking, elderly couples walking hand in hand, young parents pushing a stroller gushing over a newborn. It’s too late for any of them to be out, and I’m grateful for the seclusion, operating clandestinely with a half drank bottle of cheap red wine wrapped in a brown paper bag for dramatic effect. On a night like tonight, a younger me would have draped a piece of skimpy silk—its length barely qualifying it as a dress—over my body while sipping on a screwdriver (mostly just vodka with a splash of orange juice) from a solo cup, anxiously awaiting the journey to the nearest dancefloor. Now, I find myself craving isolation. Although not immune to my vices it feels less destructive—I can only get myself in so much trouble all by my lonesome. I drink the wine straight from the bottle, laughing at the ridiculousness that is myself. It all feels rather asinine and I’m eating up every moment of it. I feel particularly small, as if life has finally swallowed me up and spit me out. A snicker finds its way from my lips, the sudden self-awareness feels endearing. The world turns hazy, my head is spinning but the road is quiet, a flickering streetlight the only source of light in the darkness. A black cat walks past and I mistake its blink for a wink. If I were religious I would consider the night a divine intervention from God herself.

iv. The sun is setting and I’m sprawled out on my bed, the golden hour rays painting my room in a holy light, summoning the kind of beauty that forces grown men to their knees. I catch a glimpse of myself in my closet mirror. My hair is messy, my lips chapped, my throat dry. I’ve gone the whole day without saying a word, awaiting my roommate’s return to satisfy my yearning for human connection. Romance ESL by Jonah Yano plays on repeat. My chest rises and falls, my breaths long and deep, my mind empty. Beside me my pen rests upon my journal, my hands covered in blue ink stains, heavy with the confessions I’ve just laid to rest on the yellowing pages. I open my mouth to speak but no words come out. My cat looks over, awoken by my sudden movement, disturbed by my futile attempt at speech. We stare at one another for a beat before he gets up and finds his way onto my lap, purring, nuzzling himself into my open arms. We cannot communicate with each other but our silence inspires the kind of comfort usually reserved for romance. Some things aren’t meant to be said, only felt. He lets me hold him, long enough that the song on repeat loops twice, before piercing his fangs in my hand with the kind of careful consideration I recognise as a taunt, jumping up and heading to his dinner.

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To savour the solitude of tranquil silence is an art—a skill with fewer and fewer masters.

It’s become almost impossible to find pockets of quietude to nuzzle into. I’ve written about the scarcity of silence that’s become prominent in society, labelling it as a direct result of the internet and the digital age, “In a landscape designed to keep us on our screens and outside our minds, I’ve found quiet moments to have become lacklustre, yet precious. The scarcity of silence is considered uncommon among the unceasing hum of the digital world. Bystanders look at you strangely if you’re seen on an elevator without your AirPods in, clicking away at your phone.” We’ve become exempt from being fully immersed in the world around us, morphing the very idea of silence into an enemy meant to be combatted.

We think laying in bed on our phone, in the dark, qualifies as time spent alone, but can we really classify scrolling through an endless tornado of content as a lonesome activity? They may not physically be in your room with you, but our phone allows us to be privy to fashion students yapping at you about the latest trends, our feeds featuring an array of infographics created by an undergraduate psychology student on Canva. The wedding photos of a girl you went to high school with but haven't spoken to in almost a decade a mirage of human connection. We exist in an alarming paradox of connection that’s bound together by collective solitude. You may be by your lonesome, lips pressed together with no one to talk to, but you are most definitely not alone. The presence of others is right at the tip of your finger—always. You’re only one click away from escaping quietude.

Worry not, you aren’t the only one doing it, “the pervasive influence of technology shapes not just individual lives but the fabric of our collective experience,” trapping all of us in a cycle of avoidance, shooing away the real world that’s happening right outside our windows—we’d much rather consume a 40-minute YouTube video on the history of Coca-Cola than find ourselves sitting in a state of emotional reticence, lost in our own solitude. Escapism has never been easier, we’ve cured boredom. As a result, we can barely stand to be active participants in life, let alone participate in life alone—unable to be by ourselves, always reaching for our phones to avoid it. We’ve been gifted convenience and global connection, but at what cost?

You may be thinking, whatever, no big deal, what’s the point of sitting like a monk engulfed in my thoughts (many of which inspire nothing more than anxiety and dread)? Well, it’s been proven that those with high social media usage rates experience lower levels of mindfulness and emotion-focused coping strategies. This lack of mindfulness, in turn, leads to higher emotional exhaustion, indicating a direct impact on one’s spiritual and emotional well-being (Sriwilai & Charoensukmongkol, 2016). Gone are the days of making small talk with the guy beside you on the subway, he’s too busy watching TikToks. Don’t even think about trying to spark up a conversation with the only other girl sitting in the pizza shop with you at 2pm on a Tuesday, her AirPods are in, blasting Sabrina Carpenter while she scrolls Instagram, the piece of pepperoni that’s landed on her white shirt gone unnoticed. Everyone has something to say online, having no shame in raising their voices in the vastness of the digital world, while allowing the real world to continue on noiseless. Social media has mutated into a ritual of compensatory behaviours that help us cope with a fear of negative social evaluation, satisfying our desire for connection while squashing our ability to show up in real life.

Silence is important for us. It provides us with a space to sit with ourselves, our thoughts, our feelings and emotions. It’s crucial that we craft out time to simply exist, alone, away from the rest of the world. Long hours of quiet solitude can spark boredom, sure, and we’ve been quick to regard boredom as inherently bad when in reality boredom is the greatest catalyst for creativity. Being bored is essential for growth, but when you have the option to sit and scroll on your phone to avoid it, why wouldn’t you? It’s become so ingrained in our culture that to resist it feels foolish. Mindfulness has become a foreign concept, we’ve rebranded silence as a particularly distressing facade of loneliness that must be avoided, or, if you find yourself afflicted by it, must be cured. We are curbed by endless entertainment and shackled to the illusion of human connection that the digital sphere inspires.

Life is happening outside, away from the dark hole that is the internet. There are people laughing, and loving, and living, and hoping, and crying, and dancing, and yelling—outside. All of this can seem overwhelming, yes, and as we’ve become accustomed to digital interconnection, we’ve decided that the fleeting feelings of uncomfortableness that are required to truly exist, truly live, in the world are not worth the submergence. Quite the opposite is true.

Life is messy, surprising, bewildering, and it’s happening with or without you. So, I suggest you start taking part.

My advice is short and simple: log off. Go outside, experience the complexities that human life has to offer. Start to enjoy your company, work on becoming your own best friend.

Life is happening all around you, stop hiding from it.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s edition of Confessions of a 20-Something. I encourage you to share this with your close friends if you feel like it’s the kind of thing they’d be into.

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Until next month …