Disconnect to Reconnect

I promise that I love you. I promise that I love your political commentary. I promise that I love your workout routines. I promise that I love your selfies. I promise that I love your motivational quotes. They remind me a lot of my motivational quotes. I promise that I love your baby pictures and your baby’s pictures. I promise that I love your crude humor. I promise that I love your holier-than-thou righteousness. I promise that I love your graduation pictures. I promise that I love your online store. I promise that I love seeing your charitable works. I promise that I love reading the facts. I promise that I love hearing your opinions, your opinions, your opinions and your opinions; they are all valid in their own right. I love all of those things and more, but I get tired of it. It’s not you, it’s me.

Every day we are exposed to thousands of beliefs, thoughts, facts, feelings disguised as facts, overblown emotional responses and news – real, fake, liberal, conservative, etc. All of the information that we take in can be a bit much at times. Most of us are pretty good a filtering out what we don’t want to see or process in that moment, but it has been my experience that some of those previously ignored worldviews pop up later wanting to play, usually when I am about to go to bed. Or even worse; when after weeks, months or years of taking in worldviews your own worldview becomes less clear and you find yourself in a fog. Has this ever happened to you? It has happened to me before and I realized that I had to unplug – not just electronically socially, but real-life socially, as well. I’m not just talking about for a day, but for a time (week, month or season). In my experiences, I have found that away time to be extremely beneficial for many reasons:

1. PERSONALITY: In people’s minds, introversion is usually synonymous with the words shy and standoffish, but that simply is not the case. Introversion has nothing to do with how outgoing you are, but everything to do with where you get and lose your energy. Introverts typically recharge from quiet time and being in their own head, while extroverts recharge from their external environment. I am a classic introvert. I will leave your party early to go home and clean my shoes. It has nothing to do with your lituation and everything to do with my need to not get my energy zapped for 2 days because I wanted to turn up for 2 hours.
   1. More on introversion can be found in this awesome TED Talk by Susan Cain:

2. SOURCE: I touched on this a little bit earlier, but people are filled with opinions – especially people on social media and they want to tell you about them, everyday. There is nothing wrong with sharing and they have that right, and as a person who wants to expand their own worldview and to relate to others on a more personal level, the best way to accomplish that talk task is to listen to people and their opinions. Now, take that last super-long run on sentence with a grain of salt because moderation is key. Also, one must be firmly rooted in what they believe in or else the opinions of others will move them around like the tide moves the shoreline. Escaping the thoughts of others may be difficult because their thoughts are sometimes critical to our own success, but with that being said, it is my opinion that sometimes we have to get away from everybody every now-and-then to focus on what we believe in. Whether that is reading your holy book, reading your non-holy book, spending time with your family, Netflixing and chilling, doing volunteer work in your community, whatever – you have to get back to your source and spend a lot of time there. Even, Jesus had to pull away from people the people he loved to be the best version of himself.

3. TIME: You could be doing something else, plain and simple. We all do it, hit our IG and lose all track of life. Is it just me, or does 1 hour on your timeline feel like 10 minutes? A couple of those 10 minutes pass and next thing you know you’ve spent 2 hours of your life doing something that probably didn’t align one bit with getting you to your next level. Hopefully, you got something meaningful out of it (like an awesome blog from #shellbrummell), but probably not. Instead, you got a few good laughs from Kermit, were slightly intrigued by mannequin challenges and continue to get increasingly irritated that people truly believe that we can build a wall tall enough to stop airplanes full of legal documented immigrants from flying into our country. At the end of the day, while fascinating, looking at other people’s thoughts is probably not the best use of the 86,164 seconds you get in a day. So, why not unplug for a few days, maybe a week?

4. WE NEED YOU: We need your best DirecTV you, not the burnt out – washed up cable version of you. You have to get back to your drawing board and into your imagination to figure out who and what that is. We need your creativity! We need your story! We need it unfiltered and told from your frame! We need your energy. We need your thoughts. I know this seems counterintuitive to my entire argument, but it’s not. Once again, I am not against taking in the opinions of others. I’m giving you my opinion right now, I am all for sharing! I just know that we need time to process and disseminate the information that we take in. It’s cyclical. Give me what you got, let me take it, shake it out and I’ll return soon enough with my own formulated thoughts.

We live in an age of information where we are exposed to so much stuff every day. It’s a gift and curse. The knowledge is important, but too much of anything becomes unhealthy. Life is about balance, and balance is typically about self-moderation. So, every now-and-then pull away and get back to your happy place. Come back whenever you are ready. It is my opinion that you will be refreshed, will appreciate the opinions of others more and they will appreciate that you are offering your best you.

David retreats to the Cave of Adullam

David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him. From there David went to Mizpah in Moab and said to the king of Moab, “Would you let my father and mother come and stay with you until I learn what God will do for me?” So he left them with the king of Moab,and they stayed with him as long as David was in the stronghold.

1 Samuel 22:1 – 4