Input

Featured image: Vincent van Gogh, Plain near Auvers

24.10.2020

Right now, I feel alone. No. Lonely? No, not really. The year is almost over. COVID started last year, became real this year in March. A lot of people are to blame. We are all – well, almost all of us – to blame. And yet, no individual. There is nobody to be angry at, and so, I am not angry. I am fed up. I know almost everyone is. It is almost winter. There is some sunlight outside, it feels good just to look at it.

Wait, the shrill noise my office laptop is making is annoying. I need to make my time entries for yesterday (today is a Saturday) and shut it down so that it stops making this annoying noise.

25.10.2020

I stopped writing this yesterday. We are already on Sunday. Such an odd, odd world we live in. We are constantly bombarded by a stream of content coming from everywhere. There is a lot of input. Noises, sounds coming from all around us, visual input – stuff we see, smells, objects we touch. That is just a part of day to day life; always has been. But now, with our phones and tablets and laptops (and smart watches and voice assistants and other smart devices), all of this input (except maybe smell (for now)) has gone up manifold. The question is, do we even need so much input? Such a constant, unending stream of bits being relayed over cables and through the air which ultimately makes its way to our devices? 0’s become 1’s and 1’s become 0’s and we find out how many new cases were registered today, how many people viewed our LinkedIn profiles and whom the internet has been pissing on most recently. Some useful things in the mix, many utterly useless. And choice, oh my, we have so much of it! Let’s see how many video streaming services I can name… Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube (Premium), Hulu, Hotstar, HBO (Go / Now?), Disney+. Umm. That’s seven already, I cannot think of more (although there are tens – or hundreds – more out there). So many videos and shows and films to choose from. These are just video services. How about audio? Music and podcasts… Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, iTunes. Games? Apple Arcade, PlayStation, Xbox, tonnes of gaming websites and apps.

Do we need it? Hmm, that is a pointless question, isn’t it? We need only a few things. But the world would have been a very different place right now had we only made what we needed since the dawn of mankind. No, we are not creatures of need; we are creatures of want. Our desires fuel us more often than our needs do. We don’t need choice, but we do want it. And that’s okay, too. It is logical, in fact. There are almost 8 billion of us here right now. It is natural for there to be so many avenues of entertainment, of consumption… so much content. After all, people differ in so many ways, their preferences vary so much – in today’s world, there is something for everyone’s taste. The individual, though, has the option to pick and choose. It is up to us what we decide to let in. There will always be a flood of input unless I – and here is where I move to the “I” from the “we” or the “one” – choose to build a wall to stop the flood and to let in only those things which I genuinely want. And yes, want, not need. I will become a hermit if I stick to my needs, and I am not ready to be one. Not now.

The poem, Invictus, by W.E. Henley, ends with the following lines.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

My focus is on this last bit… I control what becomes of my life. A rather privileged take. There are people who are absolutely not in control of what becomes of their life — child labourers for instance, or people born in war-stricken countries on the verge of collapse, to name a few. Let me generalize this so that it fits most of us: I control what becomes of my life I have partial control over what becomes of my life. The amount of control will vary for each individual, depending upon their circumstances. I only quoted the very end of the poem, since it’s the only part relevant to me, here, now. None of the earlier lines can really apply to me — I have led too privileged and protected a life to know what real trying times are like. I have had sprained ankles, but never a broken leg (referring to a metaphor about varying magnitudes of problems, which goes something like, “Just because you broke your leg doesn’t mean my sprained ankle doesn’t hurt.”)

I control what input enters my brain through my ears and eyes, not fully — birds chirping, a car driving by, the visual stream of surroundings I take in as I go about my day, the smell of someone’s perfume on the bus — but to a great extent. I decide what I watch on the internet, the songs and podcasts I listen to, the perfume I use, the food and drinks I ingest, the things I buy. I decide what I actively consume. At any given time, I am a result of all the input I have received up to that point.

I have the privilege of having control over most of that input. I realize that many people don’t and I am grateful that I do. Most of the people who read this will also probably be in the same position as me in that regard. I want to remind them — and more importantly, myself — that we are what we consume. If we consume garbage consistently, it won’t be long before we are garbage. If we are more deliberate and sensible about what enters our body and brain though, we will end up becoming more sensible individuals.

I write these things as if to give a message, to preach, but really, it’s just me saying these things to myself. This post started out as a diary entry which would have stayed right there had I not thought, “Hey maybe I should just copy this over to my blog and continue writing there.” The conclusion is really only meant for me; So that the point gets driven home in my head. If someone else were to benefit from it, that would be a positive side-effect, but nothing more.

TL;DR: Sanika’s reminder to herself: You are what you consume, woman. So consume wisely.