The path of least existence
Your digital life needs a bouncer. Trust me, it does.
At various points in the last decade or so, I have felt a new role creep into my life, usually too late to refuse it entry. This “role creep” starts with me sitting behind my laptop, in the warm safety of relative anonymity online, with no-one present to ask me the hard questions and no reason to go looking for them. I’ll be happily hiding from the world, doing an absolutely stellar job of surfing, emailing, keeping up-to-date and seemingly making progress on my various projects. I’ll have a forest of “must read” tabs open (yes yes, including some dubious click-bait articles on happiness), countless PDF’s that will change the way I work, love and Experience Life!, and at least 20 notepad files of random snippets of inspirational quotes/book ideas/reminders/general interest items happening.
All in all, days and days of self-inflicted data that I feel promises to change me and that “needs” to be read or watched. Otherwise, why not close them all? Yet if I’m being honest, I know deep down that it wont make a real difference. Sure, there is a smattering of worthwhile information in there, but not worth the cognitive overhead that weighs on me when my laptop lid opens.
Its a sneak attack. Of course, The Internet is to blame (Just as video games were to blame in the 80’s for…what exactly?) This role will start it’s journey at the back door, a silent stealer of my motivation and will to action, surreptitiously carving it’s way to my couch where it proceeds to curl up and demand the hand-feeding of cheap Internet calories, until it is almost impossible to move, such is it’s bloat. Its presence tells me just one thing — the path of least existence has moved in.
The path of least existence is similar to it’s second cousin, the path of least resistance. Its seductive, easy, cheap, and readily available at all times and in all places. Yet it differs in one crucial way. The path of least resistance can sometimes be used to your advantage. On the other hand, the path of least existence has zero upside, ever.
How does this happen? Usually it happens through some sort of laziness on my part, a lack of stewardship of my mind. I am someone who fully understands that what I don’t know can’t help me. Yet the information scraps accumulate.
I sometimes think of it like becoming a sort of scrap collector. Not to knock any actual scrap collectors reading this, but collecting bits and bytes in the digital age is a lesson in futility. With the astounding availability of information (much of it for free or close to free) these days, there is no reason to stock up on “just in case” data. We only really need “just-in-time” information, and start to seek knowledge (or the people with that knowledge) that we need now, when we actually need it.
Thats why I feel a bouncer can help here. A bouncer can stop information from filling a place in my head where “life” should be. That’s one of the jobs of the bouncer, to stop the ardent collecting.
His other job is keep the window to life wide open.Thats right, I like to think that the opposite to the path of least existence is a window. Not a door. A door analogy right here looks suspiciously like I’m giving happiness advice.
At some point, we all have to leave the Internet behind and step out into the world. We can save and tag and categorise all we want, but thats not where life is. Life isn’t supposed to be a series of filing cabinets, storing they things we feel we may need someday. It’s meant to be an open window, dragging our bodies and minds into the fresh air of the present unknown.
Step forward. Take a look. You won’t be disappointed.
