disconnect

In a quest for a more peaceful existence (I really wish I could live in the world of Books 5 and 6 of my series), I’ve been eliminating that which causes undue stress. No, I’m not abandoning my house or nine children, but I’ve been thinking about my dad, how he was the most calm, pleasant, peaceful man I knew.

My dad, Rudy Strebel, in 2007, holding a granddaughter.

Not that his life was easy—he suffered as a child in WWII Germany, then had a wife he dearly loved but who had frequent and violent bouts with PTSD from her traumatic life as a refugee. In their 50+ years of marriage, I never knew him to lose his temper with her but did his best to soothe her paranoia and terror, every time. And I can count on three fingers the amount of time he slightly raised his voice at me.

He chose to be peaceful, and he was also very careful as to what he let into his life. He didn’t read, watch, or listen to anything that could harm his spirit or drag him down.

He wasn’t ignorant of the world, but he purposely distanced himself from it to remain unspotted as it splashed in filthy waters.

Lately I’ve been trying to pursue peace as he did, and have implemented ways to limit what weighs down my mind and soul. I’ve incorporated a number of minimalist ideas, and I’m finding greater calm in my life by doing the following:

Unsubscribe! To those emails that entice you to see what’s on sale, what the latest thing is, what you “really don’t want to miss!”

Miss it anyway. Don’t be lured in, don’t be tricked into buying something simply because it’s a great deal, and don’t waste time reading what can’t elevate you. It’s all distracting, even just deleting it, having to swat it away like a pesky mosquito. Get rid of them altogether. I’ve been opening, scrolling down, and unsubscribing from dozens of emails–even from places where I still buy something once or twice a year–and my feeds are cleaner, sleeker, and calmer. All that remains now is that which is really important for me to consider.

2. Unfollow! Here’s an awesome feature on Facebook: stay friends, but stop seeing every little thing they do.

I’ve realized that I care only about my family (we have a secret group just for us), and some neighbors and friends who consistently demonstrate insight and humor–qualities I value.

The other hundreds of “friends”? I’ve unfollowed them. I can always check on them every few months if I feel the need (if I remember who they are).

In the meantime, I’ve cut out a mind-cluttering stream of whining, bragging, complaining, and comparing. It’s been like leaving junior high all over again–sweet relief!

Now I have a feed of primarily funny, inspiring, and heartfelt posts.

Twitter, Instagram, all those others? I don’t even go there, but you can also pare those down significantly to refine your life.

3. Tune out! I quit listening to the radio years ago and felt my blood pressure in the car normalize instantly. We never watch TV news, I skim the newspaper for only important news, and I’ve quit following nearly every online news outlet.

The result? The world keeps on churning but I don’t have to swim in that muck. I know what’s going on, but I observe only from a distance. Getting angry over the world doesn’t fix it. Stepping away from it, however, allows me to continue raising my family with peace of mind.

4. Ignore trends! Years ago, I quit following trends in home décor, clothing, and etc. by eliminating magazines and TV shows that told me what I had was out of date. How much more I love my house and wardrobe now that I’m not worried what the world thinks of it! And I’ve saved a lot of money, too.

And no one, ever, has said anything about me not being trendy enough. It’s like no one really cares.

5. Don’t participate! Like my dad, I’ve chosen to not listen to music that degrades or is “hard.” I listen to soundtracks and trailer albums instead. I read only books that satisfy and uplift; one summer, I sent back nearly a dozen library books after their first chapters because they were smutty, suggestive, or crude. I don’t watch rated-R movies or anything excessively violent, vulgar, or profane. All of that introduces anger and angst to my soul, qualities I’m purposely ushering out.

Yes, it’s sometimes hard to find something current to watch or read, but there are also a lot of classics out there waiting to be discovered. I’m also taking up my dad’s habit to read more biographies of truly great people, and more doctrinal works that teach me deeper about the nature of God.

6. Choose kindness! This one can be tough, especially for me because I inherited my mother’s cynical mind and tongue (when she was well, she was acerbic and hilarious). My father, however, while full of dad-jokes (he invented them all), was also unfailingly kind, even to his end. He suffered from Alzheimer’s, but the staff at his assisted living center said that while many in his condition became angry or violent, my dad never did. It was as if his mind had been choosing for so long to be kind that it simply didn’t understand rudeness.

Kindness softens the soul, and when I’m kind to people, especially strangers, sweet peace comes. As an introvert, I don’t like talking to people and tend to be abrupt with strangers, especially when I’m checking out with my groceries. I need this t-shirt:

But I’m trying harder to smile genuinely, thank sincerely, and respond to their questions with more than two-word answers.

I’m also trying to consider everyone with a kinder heart, and a more generous attitude. Even just thinking kindly brings peace.

7. Be quiet! No, not “kindly shut up,” but I mean, take time to be quiet and disconnect. Yesterday it was 85 degrees, so I took my 5-year-old son to a splash pad. I watched him for 45 minutes racing the sprays and screaming when the water went up his nose. He dried off for ten minutes and we watched a front-loader moving dirt the whole time, seeing how much dirt he dropped as he drove.

It was “quiet” in that I wasn’t listening to music, or playing on my phone, nor was I even reading. I was simply enjoying the water splashing, the boy yelling (happily), and the truck moving dirt. Purely peaceful, purely disconnected from the bigger world. I could focus on the most important part of the world, right in front of me.

I am finding greater quiet and calm in my life in a world that’s increasingly not, and I’m always looking for new strategies. What works for you? How do you eliminate the world and its nonsense, and find peace and serenity instead?

“We don’t care about what the world thinks of us, Young Pere. You know that. We left it behind and have never regretted it.”

Peto realized there were many pure men and women, but they couldn’t exist in the polluted world.

~ Book 6, Flight of the Wounded Falcon

The past few weeks of holidays and visiting family and minor emergencies of illness and injuries and broken-down cars and blizzards has meant that I’ve been much less connected from the world than usual. Without time to edit Book 6 (which I’m actively doing again right now, never fear) I wasn’t on my laptop nearly as much, which meant that when I needed to take a break, or look up a reference, I wasn’t trolling the internet seeing what nonsense has been going on.

And it was . . . marvelous.

Think about it—to not know what irked thousands of people that hour? To miss the tantrums over nothing? To skip seeing who all was offended or marginalized or thought everyone else in the country is too pampered and here’s a thousand reasons why?

Delightful!

For those few weeks of less-connectedness, I was at peace, even though I was fending off massive whirlwinds of worry.

But not worrying about the world and its opinions was . . . heaven.

Now those weeks are over, and now I’m back to hard-core laptopping, and I find myself pulled stupidly back into the discussions, the comments, the articles, the self-righteousness in every corner, and I wonder . . . How do I regain that lovely peace I had so recently?

I know part of my problem: FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out. I’m a recovering news hound, desperate to know everything that’s happening everywhere, because if I don’t know what’s happening, how can I be prepared for what may (and likely may not) happen to my family in the future?

I also have an obsession with reading everything that crosses my way. In the car, I glance at every billboard, every street sign, even graffiti. My eyes have to take it all in. It’s even worse when I’m on social media. Every blasted headline, word, image, comment, etc. I feel compelled to read. I’ve been like this since kindergarten: someone took the time to write it, I need to honor their efforts to read it.

It sounds noble, but it’s utterly absurd.

So I’m sincerely asking: how do you train your mind to hold back the avalanche of too much information, especially when you work on a computer every day? How do you discipline yourself to look to see only if your daughter responded to your message, and not get caught up in a circular debate elsewhere about what constitutes religious persecution?

I don’t have a smart phone, blessedly, otherwise I’d be on overload all the time. We also don’t have cable/dish/TV, but watch only Netflix and Amazon Prime, which gives us a great deal of control over what never gets into our house.

But that blasted laptop, which is my best friend and confidante, is also like a gossipy fishwife, tempting me with news about some frivolous or important issue (don’t know until I’ve read it), or some images of an awesome volcanic eruption (which I need to show my volcano-obsessed son) or something stupid some celebrity said (I don’t know what actress said at whatever award ceremony, nor do I want to; the only celebrity news I ever pay attention to has to deal with Star Wars or Harry Potter alum).

Lappy, I both love you and resent you because you enable my worst habits. Fie you. Never leave me!

I’ve narrowed down my problems to Facebook (I don’t understand Twitter, I’m too old to “get” the other social media pages, I limit myself to visiting only 10 posts on Pinterest and go there ONLY if I have a legitimate need, and I have a Google Plus account that I visit maybe once a year, which seems that’s as often as anyone else visits Google Plus) and a couple of news forums (or those pretending to be, like Yahoo).

Oh, but they call to me. And I feel guilty if I don’t know what they’re crying about, or what’s happening with them, as if I’m doing something wrong by not being connected, as if I owe it to the world to join in the melee.

But then I’m annoyed with myself for falling for their inane click-bait titles, or wasting precious time on someone’s ill-thought-out tirade.

So tell me—how do you decrease your involvement in nonsense so that you can be more connected to the real sense of world of home and family and neighborhood instead?

How have you pulled heaven a bit more to earth?

I desperately want that. (And yes, I’m realizing that my posts for 2017 so far have consisted of asking for advice; this may be a new trend since I’m not clever enough to come up with something earth-shattering each week.)

“There’s nothing in this world I want anymore,” Perrin said. “Nothing except to take my family and leave it.”

~Book 4, The Falcon in the Barn