The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World

by Nancy Colier

The desire to capture life is motivated primarily by fear. We are afraid that if we stop trying to capture life, to pin it down and prepare it to be remembered — often before it has even happened — we will miss out on it or it will go away. We are afraid of the impermanence that is the very nature of life, the fact that every moment is born and then dies into the next, that nothing, not even our most memorable experiences, can be lived forever. In truth, we are always living with birth and death. Our minds, however, desperately want to create ground and permanence, to discover something that doesn’t come and go, something we can keep. The recording device is the mind’s tool for trying to create this permanence. The device gives us the false sense that we can solidify our moments and keep them from disappearing into the constantly flowing river that life is. How ironic that in an effort to hold onto our experience, prevent it from slipping through our fingers, we perform the ultimate sacrifice and disappear ourselves from the experience, stop living it directly.