Gone Lightly From the Ledge

In Search of Lost Balance

The other day I went for a very cold walk outdoors. I have walked the quiet streets of my neighborhood many times, but this was the first time in years that I chose not to tether my wrist to my Apple Watch and the constant information stream that miracle of modern technology provides. Admittedly, I did bring my iPhone, but I parked that device tightly inside my zippered coat pocket, mainly so I could connect it to my earbuds and listen to David Brooks read from his latest book, “How to Know a Person,” as I went. During my brief, roughly 3,000-step journey (counted, of course, by the zippered iPhone) I never once surfaced the phone to steal a glance at it. I call all of this progress towards something less than a New Year’s Resolution, but more than mere aspiration — the determination to gain more control over the amount and type of information I allow to enter into my consciousness, from the moment I get up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep at night.

These past few years, I have been an information junkie. I have followed our national convulsions like a drug-crazed addict. I have consumed a daily diet of magazines, podcasts, radio broadcasts, and cable news programming without much thought to how it has affected my psyche. My habit was inspired by the ever-increasing stakes of American politics, played out in televised scenes of violence at the nation’s Capitol and replayed in Congressional hearings, and equally disturbing video footage of historic courtroom dramas and an astoundingly awful Presidential debate.

As good as it has been for our country that the certification of the 2024 vote was peaceful, it has not been good for the cable news outlets, particularly CNN and MSNBC. Many voters who left November 5th exhausted and dismayed abandoned the 24/7 barrage of news reporting and opinion sharing, causing the networks’ ratings to plummet. And, there being no controversy over the outcome, all that was left to report on were the President-elect’s jaw-dropping cabinet nominations and speculation about what his administration would do once it took office, hardly riveting fare compared to what came before. (Since the certification, the horrific spectacle of the L.A. fires has likely slowed the networks’ decline, though in a most unwelcome way.)

I am among those who could no longer bear to watch the familiar reporters and pundits talk about the election that was now behind us or the political “outrages” that have since occurred. (“Outrage,” I have long thought, is an overused word and an unproductive emotion). And so, with the exception of watching the moving funeral service of a magnificent human being and under-appreciated former President, I have trimmed my news consumption to a few minutes here and a few minutes there, often opting for local news in place of national coverage. I also have begun to think about how much bandwidth I have remaining to drink from that ever-flowing stream, and how this aging soul, coming off a big post-election birthday, wants to spend his increasingly precious time.

So, one of the first things I did, in addition to cutting back on the news, was to replace my Apple Watch with the classic timepiece that for the last few years had been sleeping in a drawer. The exchange was, for me at least, almost as radical as the symbolic act that opens the 1960s film “Easy Rider,” when Peter Fonda (a/k/a “Captain America”), sitting astride his monster of a motorcycle, takes off his own watch and chucks it onto the desert floor. It has freed me from the frequent texts and alerts that interrupt my days

I’m sure there are ways to turn off the interruptions without abandoning the device, but there has been something deeply satisfying about returning to the simplicity of a watch that does nothing more than tell me the time, day, and date and sweep through the seconds. And yes, I still have my iPhone, which can, with minimal effort, provide me with most of the same information the watch had provided. (In fact, I’m editing this post on my iPhone now.) But removing the watch has felt like taking that first step toward mental and emotional independence, a re-assertion of my humanity amid a rapid intensification of technological bondage.

It is only a small step. I still wear the Apple Watch for special purposes, like monitoring my heart rate when I exercise, and being able to check the time in a darkened theater. After all, the device is a marvel of our innovation age. For me, it’s just a question of how I choose to use it, or perhaps more accurately, how I will allow it to use me.

Reducing my news consumption and returning to my old-fashioned watch have been early adjustments towards this new (or, more accurately, old) way of being in the world. Another that I’ve just begun is to deliberately keep my iPhone out of reach to help me overcome the temptation to pick it up and open its time-sucking and attention-devouring apps. And, I am once again considering my dependence on social media and whether I should leave the new, no-fact-checking version of Facebook as I left the social media giant once years ago, and like I left Twitter when it was sold to its current owner. I’d miss my friends and some groups I follow, but that just might be the price I have to pay to avoid the Muskerberg march to information chaos.

Despite these new objectives, I am not going to close my eyes to what is happening in the world, abandon those who labor to make it a better place, or reject the call to follow their examples. I am just trying to free myself of the unwelcome noise that distracts me from the beauty and goodness that are already here, now, in the people I know and the places I travel, and to better equip myself to receive and dispense the grace that can flow from a less information-ravaged mind.

Old photo of a watch I wore before the invention of the iPhone