Summer is here, and once again we're called upon to reckon with an existential question that no one has phrased better than Mary Oliver in her poem "A Summer Day":
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Ever since I learned that poem, which I've quoted here before, those lines have blazed like a headline over my summers. The question is particularly urgent for those of us who live in climates where summer can seem shorter than a hiccup.
This summer, more than ever, the question that follows Mary Oliver's in my mind is this:
Tell me, do you plan to spend
this one wild and precious summer
on Facebook?
How easy it would be, for many people, to fritter summer away in the dark sinkhole of social media, waging political war via Facebook and Twitter, while cable news seethed in the background.
How tempting to defend your addiction with the claim that democracy demands it. When the nation is burning, who has time for lazy walks and picnics? As good citizens, are we not honor-bound to express and ingest opinions and factoids nonstop, today, tonight, tomorrow, forever, until we or our devices die?
We could continue to gorge on that delusion. Or we could help ourselves and the universe by going on a summer diet.
The summer diet I propose doesn't require giving up all social media. Like any reasonable diet, it begins by asking us to take inventory of our consumption so that we can master portion control.
How many hours a day do you spend scrolling and scrolling, posting and posting, feeding on or adding to the fear, lament and outrage?
One recent survey estimated the average person spends two hours a day on their online social networks and the number is rising. If my Facebook and Twitter feeds are evidence, that estimate is low, and those two hours don't take TV time into account.
Whatever your consumption is, take a moment and calculate it. Be honest. No need to reveal it, but don't lie to yourself.
That's step one in the diet program.
Step two: Whatever your number, vow that you'll devote a quarter of that time each day to doing something summery.
Summery can mean many things. A walk in the park, a swim, a bicycle ride, dinner outdoors, sitting under an umbrella at the beach, falling asleep on the porch with a book in your lap.
It's summery if it involves being outside and sensing, if only for a little while, that life is not a bullet train or a battlefield. It's safe to say that no one hears "summery" and thinks "Facebook."
And yet, without discipline, too many people will squander too much of summer in the online sinkhole, which is why we need the summer diet.
On this simple diet plan, if you spend an hour a day on social media, you're obligated to only 15 minutes of summery pleasure. If you spend four hours a day, you have to re-channel only one hour.
An hour of something summery vs. another hour of Facebook? Is it really a contest?
It can be, unless you actively resolve to do the thing that will make you healthier and happier.
Many of us live with an anxiety over how much time we spend online. We joke about it, but we're serious too. We know it's not good for us, but we dress up our addiction with excuses.
If we're not paying minute-by-minute attention to what's going on in the world, won't the world get worse?
No.
A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in a place with no Wi-Fi or cell reception, which meant no email, no Facebook, no Twitter, no calls, no texts, no blow-by-blow news of the terrible things human beings do to each other.
"Weren't you craving it?" some fellow news junkies have asked.
Nope. The act of stepping away, for a few hours, or a few days, is hard, but once you've committed to it, staying away can be easy. The health benefits are quick and deep. You're reminded that the world, for all its awfulness, is also beautiful.
So on this summer diet plan, the only discipline necessary is the resolve to step away, for just a little while every day, from the online madness. Customer satisfaction guaranteed.