"Digital Detox with Rilke" by Adam Walker
"Now, our ability to appreciate moments of quietude and contemplation must be strengthened. Right now our cultural values really emphasize work and effort and digital production. But so much of our spiritual growth that should take place in our lives, so much of the real education of understanding ourselves in the world we inhabit (the only world we really have) is the only real activity we've come to do. Many of us who have grown up in the post-digital age will, in our old age, I think cast a lingering eye upon our history only to see that we never really knew who we were and that, had we spent hours in quietude discovering ourselves in the world instead of trying to curate a persona or an online identity or to impress people in the digital world, we might have actually learned something about ourselves. We might have actually learned something about the world. And no doubt some of us will be on our deathbeds one day. And we're going to look around at all the things that will soon be out of our sight. Things like the morning sunlight on a curtain or a vase of withering flowers on the table. The green glow of summer light under a thick canopy of early leaves. Those one or two stars that still shine despite all the city lights. The winter moon floating through those bare branches of trees. And they'll see them as if for the first time and love them. But don't allow that to happen then. Don't wait until your old age to relish the beauty so near at hand now. Don't waste your life satisfying your lowered natures with entertainments and diversions of the post-digital world. Apply yourself to something worthy of your attention—to poetry, to books, to plants, to made objects, discovered objects."
— Adam Walker