Notes From My Knapsack 5-4-17

Notes From My Knapsack 5-4-17

Jeff Gill

 

Second nature, maybe even first

___

 

We are an addicted, not to say addictive society.

 

Addictive behavior is general considered to be a problem, even a bad thing, but in fact it can also be rewarded, encouraged, even promoted.

 

Our culture is in many ways bound up with the addictive side of human nature, which is a natural tendency run amok, just as growth is good, but uncontrolled growth is the logic of the cancer cell.

 

When we experience some substance or experience as good, we want more of it; when we want something to the exclusion of any other good, to the point where it's bad for us to want the one thing, it's bad. That's addiction. That's how you sell stuff to consumers, how you market products to customers. It's also how you survive in nature, looking for good food, safe places to sleep, and the right way to live for yourself and your family.

 

But as one addict to many, many others: do you see it? Can you feel it the way I'm trying to describe, that we're all tending to addictive behaviors? If you've ever opened a box of Girl Scout cookies, and shortly after unexpectedly found your fingers touching cardboard bottom, you might have some addictive tendencies.

 

Have you meant to eat a little ice cream, then scraped the carton? Thought "I won't have more chips" and soon finished the bag?

 

And our most common social addiction: much of the sleep shortage we're known to have in this country, a physical ailment that may well have its own influence on other more recognizable addictions, is due to the shocking hours we all put in watching screens. Big ones on the wall and little ones in our hands, bingeing on series TV and snacking our way through myriad short videos. Hours and hours that largely come out of our growing sleep deficit. We say we won't watch one more show, and then shake out of a doze an evening lost, far into the night.

 

"I can stop any time." Sound familiar? Yeah, addict-speak.

 

We're in the middle of "Turn Off Your Screens" week, which the Granville Recreation District and the Granville Public Library and some 15 community organizations promote each year for our own good. Yes, you may be reading this column on newsprint, or it may well be on a screen, but the message is the same.

 

You see, there are few substances out there that are bad in and of themselves. It's the how and the when and the how often (and why) that make a habit into a compulsion, a problematic addiction. Even morphine has its place, rightly used.

 

So no one is saying smash your smartphone or shoot your TV like Elvis (and he bought a new one the next day anyhow). But can you turn them off? We're not calling for a ban, but for that blessed boon of self-control. Of course, self-control is not just about will power. Any of us needs nudges, tools to help us leverage better choices. Look around this week, and you'll find a whole bunch of outdoor activities and indoor programs to distract us and turn us aside from the screens of our lives, to a different sort of living.

 

I like that this comes each year at spring. The leaves are opening out, flowers blossoming, warblers in the trees, summer constellations starting to show. It's a good time to see and live differently, to partake of "the better angels of our nature."

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's prolific on social media, but on speaking terms with "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." Tell him your tale at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.