The Biblio File February 2018 Essay: “Forty Days”

FORTY DAYS

Lent is coming up, a forty day period (not counting Sundays) leading to Easter, with an invitation to “go into the desert”, confront our demons, and, hopefully, contact what lies hidden deep within us. I’m accepting the invitation.

Unlike the physical desert Jesus chose, where he was monumentally alone and hungry, subsisting on locusts and honey, my metaphorical desert this Lent will be forty days without the screens to which I’ve become addicted. Badly addicted. My brain automatically craves and seeks the stimulation of Facebook and email—first thing in the morning, all through the day, last thing at night. It affects my attention span for reading, for writing, for sitting and letting it be. I interrupt myself a lot. I’m a Googling Youtubing Facebook swiping emoji-posting commenting scatter-brained freak.

So, on February 14, (Yep, the start of Lent and Valentine’s Day are the same this year), I’ll deactivate my three year Facebook account and commit to checking my email only twice a day—first thing in the morning and mid to late evening. I’ll vow to get my only news fix from The Week, a magazine that encapsulates  world happenings and can be read in one sitting. I swallow as I write this. I tell myself it’s only forty days. Not even a month and a half, right?

My therapist self suspects that the distraction of social media and email keep me from staying with my fear and grief about our threatened democracy, and I’m curious, a little wary, to see if that self is right, and to see how my “fast” plays out.

Best Case Scenario: My creativity will blossom. I will write more, gain new excitement for my novel, read more, watch more movies, exercise. I’ll sleep better. I’ll have spiritual insights and revelations. I’ll cry more, the deep grieving kind of crying that leaves me tired but tension free. My complexion will improve till I’m glowing. I’ll stay off Facebook forever.

Worst Case Scenario: I’ll alternate between bouts of depression and snippiness and full blown hissy fits.   I’ll binge-eat chocolate and potato chips. My complexion will coarsen. I’ll pick fights with Ed and accuse him of picking fights with me. I’ll decide it’s too late to recover from my addiction and, guilt-laden, will re-activate my Facebook account and leave my desert, knowing I have failed.

Most Likely Scenario: I’ll be grumpy and restless at first, aware of how my hand flies toward my phone, how I close the book I’m reading after the first page, in order to check my screen. I’ll sit a lot, confused about what to do next. I’ll be afraid I’m missing something, though Ed and I (He’s doing a screen fast too, but a different form than mine) have agreed to tell each other if we find out we’ve been nuked or civil war has started. I’ll read and write a little more. I’ll return to Facebook when Lent is over, with better boundaries.

I’m not too anxious about Lent. Whatever actually happens, I can handle it. It’s only forty days, right?

Right?

#