Day 1, 18 March 2014
I don’t know where I got the outrageous idea, courage or
determination from, but today, I have decided to cut myself off from all social
media for as long as I can take it. No Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, FaceTime,
Skype, Messenger, Whatsapp, Viber, Tumblr etc. Despite having done this before,
I know it still wouldn’t be easy, but I never thought that it would be this
challenging. Somehow, it feels like part of me is missing. Although I have a
report to rush (oh, how I hate academic writing), I keep looking for things to
occupy myself, spacing out every now and then. Unconsciously, I unlock and lock
my mobile, sliding through screens but not clicking into any applications. I
hunt for food even though I wasn’t hungry. I scroll through webpages, trying to
read up something for my research report but couldn’t get anything in my head.
And the beginning of this blog post is also a result of my boredom and
feeling-lost.
It really got me thinking of how dependent I am on my phone
and how intertwined my life has been with social media. Then, a thought hit me
real hard - if I were to save up all the time lost on networking sites, and
spend it on God, wouldn’t that be awesome? How much more things I can do with
God, to spend more time praying, reading the Bible, or simply listening to him.
Sometimes, we get so caught up in life that we hardly have time for God
anymore. Making it worse, sometimes we aren’t even caught up in anything, but
just pretending to be caught up, or merely giving millions of excuses not to
spend time with Him ‘cause we don’t see what we get in return. It’s like you’re
doing business with God and you’re bargaining with Him on how you can spend the
least time with Him, yet get the most return out of it. I can’t believe that
this year I was so preoccupied that I even forgot that it is already the lent
season right now. I used to (I still do, to be honest) judge people, those who
play with their phones or fall asleep during church service. Perhaps I am not
too different from them after all?
So, I want this lent season to be a little different.
Instead of fasting from food, like what I did in the previous years, I would
love to challenge myself to fast from social networking sites, and see how long
I can live without them.
