I had a birthday recently. My aunt even baked me a cake. It’s been a while since I’ve had birthday cake.
As FB doesn’t have my date of birth, no one got a reminder. And yet the phone hopped all day with messages from all over.
It was nice. Nice to be remembered.
Since my parents died, I’ve noticed that I’m no longer attached to my phone. There’s no news so important now that it can’t wait.
I’m not waiting on updates from a doctor.
I’m not waiting for the ultimate bad news.
And this year, I wasn’t waiting for them to call.
Well, I was. But they didn’t. And I knew they wouldn’t.
But for all my not waiting, I am getting better at waiting waiting.
I’ve slowed down.
Now I’m the car that others overtake.
I’m not in a rush anywhere.
If I have to wait, I have a book.
I always have a book.
Or I can simply sit.
I’ve converted an outbuilding into a little kapolna where I can sit.
I’m getting better at sitting, too.
Simply sitting.
Am I’m grateful for it.
I recently read something Ursula K. LeGuin said in an interview with Heather Davies for Hobo magazine. It resonated:
I lived when simply waiting was a large part of ordinary life: when we waited, gathered around a crackling radio, to hear the infinitely far-away voice of the king of England… I live now when we fuss if our computer can’t bring us everything we want instantly.
We deny time.
We don’t want to do anything with it, we want to erase it, deny that it passes. What is time in cyberspace? And if you deny time you deny space. After all, it’s a continuum—which separates us.
So we talk on a cell phone to people in Indiana while jogging on the beach without seeing the beach, and gather on social media into huge separation-denying disembodied groups while ignoring the people around us.
I find this virtual existence weird, and as a way of life, absurd. This could be because I am eighty-four years old. It could also be because it is weird, an absurd way to live.
I’m no longer on Twitter. I rarely post on Instagram. I’ve avoided TikTok. My Facebook time is limited to my blogs and occasional reposts. And I value distance.
Is this what it means to grow older?
