Inspiration.
A luxury?
Or a necessity?
This is the question I asked myself after listening to a podcast that suggested the former. I found myself in disbelief at the thought. How could anyone call inspiration a luxury when it is something so crucial to our lives as human beings? The idea made me cringe. But then I began to realize that the notion of inspiration as a luxury is actually causing harm in our society. We are attached to our phones and our computers and our televisions nonstop attempting to quench our lust for information. We prize entertainment and put communication on a pedestal. We are addicted to being “connected” and “informed.” But all this obsession with information and technology comes at a cost.
We live in the Information Age, the Knowledge Economy, the prime of the revolution of knowledge. We take our access to discovery for granted and Google is a tool we use daily, if not hourly. I love the internet, and I am hooked on my smart phone as much as the next person. I recently discovered the world of podcasts, and there is so much priceless content, available for free, that I am already overwhelmed by it. I feel immersed in information, and a lot of it is valuable and useful. But somehow I feel like something is missing.
I listen to podcasts and read blogs and articles about productivity, how to get more things done, how to overcome procrastination, learn to resist the enemy called distraction. I can find a how to for anything I aspire to do. I can find a million tips and tricks to help me improve at doing those things. I can learn about motivation, flow, business, success, creativity… But getting caught up in this gift of information has expensive consequences. Free information comes at a cost.
“Thoreau said most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Don’t be resigned to that!”By most standards, we are very lucky that knowledge is so abundant and accessible. But there is one purpose all this free education cannot fulfill, a critical role it cannot play, a part for which there is no substitute. That purpose is inspiration. Something no amount of knowledge can compete with. As John Keating exclaims in Dead Poets Society, “This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls.”
In this game to be up to date, to gather answers to all of our trivial questions, we fall into a pattern of perpetual dependence on information. We get lost on Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest… We force ourselves to be informed and forget to become inspired. Our lives become mundane and our spirits become empty. “Thoreau said most men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Keating tells his students. “Don’t be resigned to that!”
I recently read a commencement speech by Anna Quindlen and it made me question this race we build our lives around. “You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your minds, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.”
We as culture are in the midst of a crisis. As a society addicted to instant access, to the ability to locate any piece of information whenever a thought crosses our minds. We’re so obsessed with researching we are neglecting our hearts and our souls. “People don’t talk about the soul very much anymore,” Quindlen continues. “It’s so much easier to write a résumé than to craft a spirit.”
“It’s so much easier to write a résumé than to craft a spirit.”Well I urge you: don’t starve your spirit in favor of feeding your mind. We need to nurture our souls by cultivating inspiration. Let me give you a hint: you probably won’t find it with your smart phone. You might not find it by compulsively checking your feeds or listening to your podcasts. It’s possible we’ve forgotten the magic of serendipity, when we get an impulse to go for a walk, to meander through a bookstore with no preconceived plan. To pause in the present. To appreciate poetry.
“I have a secret for you…” whispers Keating. “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering–these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love–these are what we stay alive for.”
The risks of continuing to live in a flood of information and a famine of inspiration are unknown. But I don’t think it’s a risk we should be willing to take. We can’t afford to treat inspiration as a luxury. We need to treat it as a necessity.
Comments
Post a Comment