why you don’t have to keep up

Along the theme of my last few posts about social media and voices coming at us from all angles, I feel it’s also important to discuss this idea of “keeping up,” and why it’s utterly exhausting and not worth it.

There’s so much temptation–nay, demand, to keep up with everything in our culture. If we’re not up to date on the news, the current social issues, our friend’s camping trip, and the hot political topics all at once, we are deemed “ignorant,” as if we don’t really care about what’s happening in the world. Well, most of the time I think we all do care; we may just be suffering from compassion fatigue and burnout.

Just like with the voices in our lives, we can only process so much information at once. We can only scroll from the beautiful birth of our friend’s child to the loss of another friend’s dad in the span of 5 seconds so many times before our hearts feel just about ready to explode with the constant back-and-forth of deep pain and incredible joy.

We are not meant to consume the amount of material we are currently bombarded with. We are not built for it. We can’t handle it. It is too much for our fragile psyches.

How do we balance the information we consume with the life we live? I still don’t have an answer. I am still struggling myself, to be honest. I want to be connected. I want to know what’s going on in the world and with my friends. And the internet makes it so dang easy to do that to an obsessive degree. With the tap of my finger I can access worlds.

But I’d rather be the person that missed something important because I was so busy living my important life. I would rather be a little bit clueless and distracted living my life for the Lord than constantly attached to my phone waiting for the vicarious stimulation of someone else’s important event.

I’m not promoting shutting off everything–I just want you and I to find relief from the constant distractions bombarding our souls.

What if we paid more attention to the immediate people in our lives, in our circles, than the people we only see on the screen? What if we got involved in some local issues, rather than letting the fear mongering of the world news make us paralyzed because there’s nothing we can really do? What if we focused on what is right in front of us in this day, and the simple work that God is calling us to do right now, in our analog life?

I write this to you as someone who is still figuring it all out. I am still quick to turn to the screen, but I’m not finding the fulfillment I’m craving. And I sense God calling me to a deeper way of living, a way that isn’t wrapped up in keeping up with everyone else but rather keeping up with Him. Seeking to know what He is up to, what He is doing in my heart and in my circles and in the world. Sometimes that involves other people and social media and world events, but sometimes it’s just between me and Him.

Let’s stay connected, but with purpose.Let’s remember why we’re here and focus on our little part in the story. Let’s create instead of consume.