JetUNsetter

I make the decision quite often to stop scrolling social media. I stay strong for a while (sometimes a day or two, sometimes an hour or two… ) and then I go back to my aimless and endless habit. Sure a neuroscientist can explain the drug like effect and the dopamine and all. What I find alarming is how I know this is a waste of my most precious asset: time, I know it steals my happiness, I know it deprives me from a million other better things to do and yet, I do it.

I am conscious it’s harmful and come on, just stupid, and I do it. And it’s not the only thing. I will eat that second piece of cake, absolutely certain I will regret it, I will stay on my couch and not go to the gym, I will order the burger instead of preparing a salad, I will play victim when I am wronged, I will be aggressive instead of assertive and the list will take me two blog posts if not more, if I carry on now…

There is no real magic or that big of a science behind it in the end. Comfort is all it ease. Comfortable scrolling, comfortable food, comfortable bad habits overall. Who, though, made comfort such an asset in my head, at the expense even of my only real assets: good health and good times.

By coincidence or not, I am reading a book about conformity and how it is instilled on us as the only way to control us, by parents, religion, corporate and so on. CoNformity and CoMfort, are they just a letter in the alphabet apart? Are they reliant on one another? I just do what is easy and safe instead of bothering to make decisions? If I don’t scroll on social media or on my favorite brands’ websites (with zero intention, nor budget to make a purchase of course) then I am faced with the complexity of choosing among those other million options to better spend that time! Who would ever go through such an ordeal and painful decision making, right? Besides, I was given someone else’s choices to ruminate all my life! Be this by age x, do this way z, ask permission to do w.

I may be seeing a master plan where there is none OK, but had I been taught or just allowed to live my life as I please, had I been taught to make decisions easily, would I still scroll? Knowing how stupid the activity is, the blocker is obviously some place else (my brain has given signs of genius on occasion, albeit scrolling is not the only stupid thing I do, so trust it’s not that structural of a problem… )

It’s sad but then again, liberating to know the power to a life not wasted it’s just a skill away: retraining myself to live off script. Please help me make sense of this one too….