A screen within a screen

After reading Part III of Hamlet's Blackberry, I took a moment to consider how connected I am, and I have to say, I think I'm getting pretty good at this whole balance thing.

Sure, I have a smart phone -- an iPhone -- and I frequently text and email and log onto Facebook throughout the day. But as soon as I get home, I like to unwind and forget about those digital ties. I like to forget about my responsibilities. I don't know how healthy that is, but it stops me from stressing out about every little thing I have to do. When I'm with my roommate and our friends, I don't need my phone because these are the people I would be communicating with anyway. I feel like our interactions are fairly organic because they primarily consist of listening to music, grabbing a bite to eat and talking about whatever may be on our minds.

I feel like my generation is probably the last one to experience a time that was not totally dominated by technology. My childhood was vastly different from what my nine-year-old sister's is like today. Yes, my family had a computer, but it wasn't something sophisticated, and I'm not sure what we ever used it for anyway. I remember playing around with the word processor, fascinated by the letters that appeared and disappeared from the screen. I remember playing outside for hours with the neighborhood kids more though. Sometimes, my sister will venture outside to play with the neighbors, but more often than not I find her engrossed in a YouTube video or SpongeBob game. And I wonder how that will affect her in the future.

A product of balance

Lately, I've been hearing a lot about balance. Whether it's in a song or a poem or an idea, the topic of balance has become intricately linked to that of peace and harmony. And that makes sense: Peace is a product of balance. But it's not as easy as it sounds.

I couldn't help but think about balance while reading the article "The Joy of Quiet" by Pico Iyer. That seems to be the idea behind what Pico and his friends are doing when they leave their cellphones at home and escape for days at a time to a secluded, wood area where there is no service, no reception, no Internet connection. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe there is just a fundamental lack of balance on this planet.

Just think about it. If one person can apply the practice of balance to her life and reap the benefits from that, then why wouldn't that work on a global level? Sure, access to all the information I could ever imagine is pretty great stuff. But so is staring up at a sky filled with so many stars that you can't even count them all. And I wouldn't necessarily trade one for the other. I'd just like to learn the art of balance.