The Wellness Beat: Are We TECHing Our Way To Despair?

By , Nancy Colier
As a psychotherapist and interfaith minister, my specialty is helping clients uncover a state of deep well-being, and most importantly, one that is deeper and more reliable than the likability of their current circumstances.  

Ironically, deep well-being is not a state we need to create but rather one that we need to rediscover within ourselves.  It is a state of being that is here when we are born and is indeed always here, and yet it is a state that we lose touch with as we "grow up."  

Sadly, we are taught to believe that well-being lives outside of us, in other people and other things.  In truth, well-being is always inside us, patiently awaiting our own attention.  Deep well-being comes from being able to meet this moment, as it is, even as it is constantly changing.  Well-being means being able to ask "what is here?" rather than to demand that this moment give us something that we want.  The often overlooked fact however is that we need to spend time nurturing and nourishing our inherent well-being.  Simply put, we need to pay attention to our own well-being.  Well-being will not fall out of a tree and into our lap.  We need to practice returning home, to what is right here, right now, in this moment.  When we focus on what is here, we find the state of being which is eternally okay, content and well.  We find ourselves.
 
Setting out into the world as an investigator of well-being, I have begun to examine our current culture and ask: What in our society is eroding our attention to and relationship with this deeper sense of well-being?  What is obstructing our access to the well-being within us, deterring us from our inherent spiritual, emotional, and physical health.  What are the poisons to our state of deep well-being?  And what are the nutrients, those elements that reacquaint us with how well we really are?  This question brings me (quickly) to a discussion of technology...
 
So what does technology have to do with well-being or UN-well-being?    The human mind is a miraculous instrument and can accomplish amazing feats.
It is also an unsettled and frantic instrument.  Its basic state is agitation. The mind is in a state of constant craving; it desperately seeks distraction, entertainment, problems to fix, and really anything.  It needs constant food to keep it fed.  The mind has a very hard time landing and being here.  As a result, the mind seeks to keep us focused anywhere but here.  In Buddhist literature, the mind is often likened to a monkey that has been stung by a bee and simultaneously polished off a bottle of wine. Technology as we are using it now in our culture is like shooting that monkey with 500 CCs of adrenaline.  The monkey is thrilled, but is this what is best for us as a species?   When I ask my clients what makes them feel well in their lives, I hear one of three things:
  1. connection with other people
  2. creativity
  3. spirit-oriented activities. 
In all my years asking this question, I have never heard someone say that playing games on their iPhone leads to a feeling of deep well-being, nor does checking their Facebook page and Twitter account.  Technology is breeding distraction into the human species, just as you would breed long ears into a dog.  

It is breeding out the capacity to be with ourselves or anyone else, and worst of all, simply to be here.  Technology is radically increasing our opportunity to be distracted, and legitimizing distraction as an acceptable way to spend our lives.  We take pride in our digital pacifiers, bonding over our shared addiction.

The mind thrives on technology, more information, more games, more ways to tinker, more things to do to keep us busily not present. If you ask a crack addict what will make him well, he will tell you more crack, and he will be sure of it.  If you ask the mind what it needs to be well, it will tell you more information, more ways to stay busy, more problems to solve.  The crack addict is the wrong one to ask what he needs.  His answer is incorrect.  More crack will not make him feel well, but will only calm his shakes and get him high... for a short time.  And then the problem will return, only with more ferocity.  He will wake up with a little more tolerance, needing a little bit more crack to escape his feelings, and to get away from here.  The part of him that might still be able to function without escaping will be a little bit weaker, the light in him a little bit dimmer.  Similarly, the mind is the wrong part of ourselves to ask what we need to be well.  In truth, people that spend all day texting, surfing, gaming, checking, checking, checking and then checking again… checking for what they do not even know… in fact, do not feel well at the end of the day.  They feel depleted, empty and depressed.  They are vacuumed out but needing ever more stimulation.  Worst of all, they are convinced that they need to start searching all over again, for something that will satisfy them and leave them feeling whole. Their addiction has grown a little bit stronger, their capacity to soothe their own suffering a little bit withered, and their belief that distraction is what they want and need, a little bit invigorated. They have fed the monkey all day, successfully outrun the moment, successfully avoided their here.  And remarkably, at the end of all that action, that frantic ingesting, they are left spiritually and emotionally ravenous. They have not landed anywhere, all day, not gotten into anything, spent any quality time anywhere or with anyone.
 
The carrot that technology dangles is that more communication, more bits of information, more choices, more entertainment, more of everything will invigorate and satisfy us, and lead us to a better experience of life.  This is a false belief, like the addict who takes another hit to make himself okay.  We do not need more frequent communication, we need deeper connections.  We do not need more bits of useless information, we need more meaningful dialogue.  We do not need more entertainment, we need to engage our own imagination and creativity.  We do not need to get away from ourselves and now, we need to meet ourselves and land in this moment. We do not need more ways to get to there, we need to learn how to get to here.  Well-being can only live in this now and if we are not in it, we cannot experience it.

Our heart and spirit need something very different than what our mind craves.  Right now, as a society, we are living entirely out of sync with that which really nourishes and makes us well.  The drunken, feverish monkey within us has taken over the controls.  The result is that we are sailing into despair, an entertaining, lightning-paced, glittery and bespangled despair for sure, but despair nonetheless.  It is up to us and well within our power to wrestle this life back from the misinformed (and suffering) monkey.  As human beings who, unlike other species, have the incredible gift of awareness, it is our responsibility to stop feeding ourselves with that which is ultimately starving us.  It is our mandatory and inescapable charge now, as individuals and a species, to get off the frantic wheel of distraction, and to deliberately turn our attention to those experiences that truly nourish us, that lead us back to our natural well-being and reacquaint us with our inherent wholeness.

What does "well-being" mean to you?

Find more of Nancy's writing here: www.nancysc.com and www.theun-happinessproject.blogspot.com