No matter which words you use to describe the current times and culture, the word ‘connected’ keeps popping up. This day and age, we are constantly connected to others via cell phones, social media and whatnot, often in more than one way at the same time. But have you thought about the power of being disconnected?
Some of us can handle being constantly connected better than others, but I think we can all agree that it has changed our lives considerably. The fact that we have become ‘available’ almost 24/7 has had an enormous impact on our lives.
You just need to go out for dinner to see examples: dad is checking his email, while mom is texting a friends and the kids are playing with their iPads. Being connected has in some ways harmed our real life connection to other people.
Unplug and Get Disconnected
Because of all this, being disconnected has become more and more important. I’ve always been a big fan of having a Sabbath day every week (being a youth pastor, Sunday usually wasn’t the best day for that), having a day of rest with God and your family.
Nowadays, I’ve also become quite attached to being disconnected for a day or even longer. This summer, I took a break from blogging and all social media for three weeks and it was great. I got to spend uninterrupted time with my family, I read a lot of books, and I found true rest and relaxation.
Disconnecting from it all has huge benefits:
- It will prevent you from becoming too attached to materialistic stuff.
- It will prevent addiction to for instance social media, a real danger these times.
- It will help you get a better perspective by stepping back from it all. It helped me for instance to see the relative (un)importance of certain social media in my life.
- It will help you find deeper rest, as you are almost ‘forced’ to spend time relaxing.
- It will help you disconnect better from your job, your volunteer work, etc and not keep thinking about this in the back of your mind.
- It will help you spend more time with God and allow you to better hear His voice. I’ve found this to be especially true: reducing the ‘noise’ by disconnecting really improves your relationship with God.
If it’s not a habit of you yet, I advise you to try making disconnecting a regular occurrence. Just one day a week, step away, turn your email and social media off, and relax.
One warning though: it may have some serious unintended consequences. Some people who disconnected discovered they actually liked life better that way and never connected again.
