Disconnecting offers chance to recharge
Posted Sep 30, 2010 By Ryland Coyne
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Tweet ThisEMC Lifestyle - So there I am on the dock, listening to the gentle waves lapping against the shore, a distant loon calling out to its partner, when it hits me. I'm completely out of touch with civilization.
I have no cell phone. My computer has no internet link. There's no cable or satellite dish. I'm not even anywhere near a land line at that moment. Just me, my family and good ol' nature. And I love it!
It takes these rare moments of escape from all the noise that envelops me on a daily basis to see just how crazy our so-called connected world has become.
Growing up in Ottawa back in the late '60s and early '70s, our family had a rustic cottage located about half an hour from the city. It was located on the far shore of the lake with no transportation link other than the rickety old boat we used to get back and forth. There was no electricity (we used propane) and no telephone.
We spent entire summers there, almost from the last day of school to Labour Day Monday.
When my father, who commuted into the capital for work, returned at the end of the day, we would wait down by the dock for his horn to sound 'Come and get me!' We would hop into the aluminum craft, powered by an old Johnson 10 hp motor, and trundle off, returning triumphant a half hour later with father safely back in our midst.
If we were lucky, he would have stopped at the little store in Chelsea and bought us a treat, like the old Popeye cigarettes (translated today to 'Candy Sticks' for political correctness). It was magic!
I try to describe what life was like to my own kids today and it's like I'm serving them up some piece of unfathomable fiction.
"You've got to be kidding," they respond when I tell them how our only form of 'communication' was a transistor radio and battery-operated turntable that played scratchy records from the swing era or Rodgers & Hammerstein musical.
"There's no way!" they gasp if I dare challenge them to trade in their GameBoy for a rousing card game of Crazy Eights or War.
It wasn't that long ago was it? While I don't remember being thoroughly enamoured with the apparent exile situation, I don't ever remember thinking it was the worst thing in life, either. Friends were still able to come visit. We had a massive teeter-totter made from a lengthy piece of two-by-eight. My father built a make-shift car from logs we could use to pretend we were racing around a track. There were board games (our favorite was one called Michigan Jackpot...I don't know if it even exists anymore). There were constant games of 'Kick the Can' and there was swimming, always swimming.
Today, we can't seem to go 10 seconds without communicating with someone, somewhere. Here at the office, I get flooded with 150-200 emails per day, phone calls are constant and yes, I even still get the occasional piece of hand-written (gasp!) mail.
During our serene mid-summer break, surrounded by this natural beauty, a visiting couple's apparent inability to disconnect served to underscore the situation. On supposed 'vacation', they were locked onto their handhelds, checking emails from bosses and keeping up with the very latest of just what, exactly, I'm not sure. I wasn't going to ask, either.
If nothing else, the summer experience last month has taught me it's okay to take a break, turn off the phone or log off the computer. The world won't come crashing down and who knows, the brain might just have a chance to reboot. And you just might be better for it.
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