Stop the Ride
My mother doesn’t like to be jostled. She prefers things steady and calm. When my brother and I were kids, the whole family went to Dave & Buster’s and in the name of family fun, mom agreed to come on a ride with us. It was one of those movie theater simulation experiences, where the seats move in sync with the projection on the screen. After waiting in a long line, it was finally our turn. We funneled into the huge room, claimed our seats, and buckled in. The lights went down, the screen went up, and our chairs immediately jerked to the right, jerked to the left, and threw us back, flinging our legs in the air. The audience roared with squeals of delight.
Except mom.
Mere seconds into the ride, my mom starts frantically waving her arms in the air and shouting, “STOP THE RIDE!” Some poor usher hits the emergency shutdown button, the lights come up, and there is a collective moan as everyone is slowly ushered out of the theater. My brother and I were mortified. To be fair, it was more jostley than one would have expected.
I hadn’t thought about this moment for decades, until last week.
I was in the relaxation room at a spa where people spend serious money to unwind. I peeled the cucumbers off my eyes and lifted my head from my heated neck wrap to find every single person in that relaxation room on his or her phone, scrolling. These people, who paid top dollar to disconnect from the stress of life, staring at their phones. Their faces were all lit with a slightly eerie, artificial glow radiating from their screens. They looked hypnotized.
I immediately felt like waving my arms in the air and shouting, “STOP THE RIDE!”
I. Want. Off.
#Unsubscribe.
I do not want to be zoned out in this one life. I don’t want my body to be addicted or my mind to be hijacked by advancing technology, consumerism, or corporate America. But, of course, nobody wants that. So I not only want to get myself off the ride, but I feel a responsibility to save the others, and fight the system that’s creating the problems. That’s a heavy load for one girl trying to get her relaxation on.
Sometimes I feel like a canary in the coal mine. I sense the dangers and want to get everyone the hell outta there.
We are born and raised in layers upon layers of conditioning. This is good. This is bad. Modern day society sets our human conditioning ablaze. This is the food to eat. This is the best gizmo. This is what you should want. This is the way to be happy. Fall into line (and sales funnels) like the good soldiers you are.
It’s hard to question the status quo. It’s painful to ponder if and how we’re being manipulated or controlled. And actually doing something about—daring to get off the ride—is the hardest of all.
So most people don’t. We just keep scrolling. And I don’t just mean on our phones. We scroll through our days, through our weeks, through our lives.
Well, I for one refuse to accept this. It’s why I’m exploring life alcohol free—to remove a cozy, hazy layer of numbness. It’s why I’m practicing sitting with pain—so that I don’t stop pondering in an effort to avoid it. It’s why I read annoyingly deep philosophical books that hurt my brain—so that I keep some objectivity as an observer in life, as opposed to getting swept away in its mighty current.
But. And it’s a big but…
The masses—the scrollers—all seem kind of fine. Maybe not overflowing with aliveness, but content enough. Certainly not burdened with some visceral pain around the meaning of life. It’s like they’re floating along on a flamingo raft in a lazy river with an umbrella-clad pina colada while I’m channeling Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Don’t Look Up, going increasingly mad screaming, “Just look up, people!”
Maybe I should just slide a float into the lazy river. Put on my sunglasses, close my eyes, and drift off.
Of course, we all know what happened in the movie…
(SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE)
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Leo was right.