Rabbit Rabbit

OK that was a mixed thing.

Giving up the Internet for 40 days was a great conversation piece but otherwise, for the most part, irritating.  It was like giving up the phone book, the dictionary, the atlas.  You can do it, and you can find the paper alternatives, but the process takes longer and the results are less complete.

You miss a lot of the pushed popular cultural references, the bad behavior of movie stars and politicians.  But you don't lose track of weather killing people in Japan, or dictators killing people in Libya, or the mass US civics lesson that is playing out over federal budgeting and debt.  As to these, maybe you've missed (how to know, since you've missed it) some of the nuance, and certainly you're missed a lot of punditry and chatter.

You do waste less time.  Every second is precious and gone forever, so that is a good thing.  The avoidance of lost time was most apparent when I strayed from the vow, because ten minutes into an Internet hunt for something (usually music) I would realize where I was and go back to where I belonged.  So, better time management.

But, generally:  kind of a yawn.  Next year maybe I will give up something even more fundamental, like walking... ooh there's a thought.  Conduct life at a run, a trot, or a crawl.

 Which brings me, at this 40-day pace, mostly walking, to Easter.  I find I'm becoming a practicing Christian - emphasizing "practicing" - but this holiday is still where I come up short.  My father used to say that religion is about what happens when you die.  Not for me.  For me it's about what happens before you die.  I do not believe that we maintain any kind of separate personality after we die, or will arise again as we were or want to be, whether we follow Jesus or not.  I think, subject to the Threshold Theory, that when we die it's lights out.  And I'm OK with that.  How we get there, that's the hard part.

The Threshold Theory - next post.