Time for a “New Journey,” or should I content myself with what I’ve learned from a lifetime of paths already traveled? in Daydreaming on the Porch

I’m watching the skies outside my window alternate between thick overcast and emerging light. I love the anticipation. Suddenly it’s sunny out. I feel my spirits lifting. I keep turning to look out the window. My favorite oak tree has just about lost all its leaves, as it does this exact time every year. It’s one of the last trees to keep autumn in view a while longer until winter makes its presence known definitively in the landscape of bare trees intermingled with the green of pines. That makes for a nice contrast, which I note on my walks.

Despite the huge changes 2022 has brought in my life, such as selling the family home and moving to another part of town to a place perfectly suited to my remaining “retirement” years; dealing with Covid; watching the climate and weather change with ominous rapidity; the nightmarish war in Ukraine, there is a lot that has remained the same this year in my personal life that I wish, or at least think I should change. Too much time on the Internet and not enough outside involvement and friendship with people here in my area, for one thing. Dealing with the clutter in my apartment. Can I resolve to change bad habits? Yes, of course. That’s easy to do. The hard part is actually wanting to make what will amount to major changes in my lifestyle, departing from one that is too insular and confining, holing up in my book-filled apartment, to one that embraces others and the outside world. I find that my room, my apartment, my books, and music, the infinite universes of the Internet that simply boggle my mind, all tend to become the be-all and end-all, the sanctuary that affords me escape from the messy realities outside the walls of this comfort zone, except when I flagellate myself by feeding an addiction of news of every kind on the Internet.

The hours today passed in quiet busyness as I became more and more absorbed in the routines I am accustomed to, both good and bad. They all tend to blend and merge into one state of being, swiftly flowing rivers of time and endless possibilities for entertaiment and stimulation provided by the Internet, and yet regret at all the time that is truly and lamentably wasted, when all is said and done.

The constant stream of cute and entertaining dogs and cats, singers, dancers, inane antics, endless YouTubers broadcasting their lives, and in some cases their inner selves, along with mind-blowing interviews, talks, illuminating documentaries, historical films, psychology, spirituality, philosophy, physics, art and educational videos all crying out to be consumed on the endless buffet line they is YouTube.

And then there are the short videos crowding into the YouTube multiverse that delight and amuse those of us with attention deficits, and now Instagram, which I recently joined, with its multiple, serendipitous surprises and crazy, funny nonsense that tweak the dopamine pleasure centers in the brain. All of this can keep me hooked on the fleeting enjoyment of real, and yet random and often silly and superficial pleasures, that curl up like lazy plumes of pipe smoke, and then dissipate and are gone. That might even be a useful analogy for the Internet as a whole.

Many of these online activities — and their sheer number, such as seeking people to befriend online, and other virtual pursuits, when not self-defeating are a depressing but necessary reminder that this cyberspace world, now increasingly ruled and controlled by algorithms and bots, is an escape hatch, a retreat from reality, in countless ways. Yet, I totally love it, and have since Day 1 when Netscape 2.0 flickered onto my Mac computer screen in 1996, and everything changed, literally, in a twinkling of an eye.

Now I honestly can’t imagine life without it. The Internet has banished boredom. No more restless leisure hours wondering what to do. No friends? Now you can find all you want, and more if you work hard enough at it and look closely. This can lead to a kind of pleasant, and yet stupifying indifference and apathy toward doing anything differently. It leads to the paths most often taken, meaning instead of doggedly pursuing and doing the hard work of in-depth learning, research, and finding knowledge, wisdom and enlightenment, all of which is also enabled and richly supplied by the Internet, we fall back on the quick and easy, though quite satisfying and endlessly distracting, new “ways of being” (“Googling” everything, for instance) that we have settled into on the Internet.

How many countless thousands, and even millions of people, follow and are entertained and taught by smart and savvy YouTube “influencers,” for example, who stand to get rich by canny use of Web technology to broadcast themselves, their daily lives, and their beamingly infectious, enthusiastic and energetic personalities, ideas and creativity all over the world? Everyone now can get famous on the Internet, can become a published author, filmmaker, popular blogger and on and on. This makes even the most energetic and accomplished, busy and productive lives in all decades prior to the Internet, seem almost tiresome and boring compared to the many virtual worlds we can inhabit today, and even prefer them to in-person encounters and activities.

Whereas previous generations spent countless hours reading printed books, newspapers and magazines, or doing research at libraries, today’s younger generations, who grew up with the Internet, now live their lives on their phones, connected to the Internet. Now, also, our vast library of knowledge and go-to source for even arcane information on just about anybody and anything of note and consequence, is Wikipedia. The once massive and all-encompassing Encyclopedia Brittanica seems ancient, meager and small by comparison. And on it goes.

Seismic shifts have occurred in every aspect of our lives due to tidal waves of newer, better and smarter technologies, yielding exponentially more information, data, and knowledge. But what we doing with all that data and information? Letting others use it to obtain wealth, power and influence at the cost of our privacy while offering free, addictive social media services like Facebook formerly, and today TikTok and Instagram, which now lead the social media pack in popularity.

Ironically, the Internet re-enforces and fortifies us as the mighty creatures of habit, routine and custom that we are. We now can’t live without our phones. It’s how we manage lives on a daily basis. It fills our non-work, and for many, our work time as well. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for “real world” epiphanies, joy and adventure. Habits can be soothing and comforting soul crushers, Soma pills, as in the all-controlling, sedating drug in Huxley’s “Brave New World,”

I have been thinking of a road trip in the country some years ago. I always look at signs, and some of them I remember, but most are forgotten, naturally. But I liked this one and remembered it: “New Journey Community Church.” Isn’t that what I am alluding to here? The fact that maybe I need to embark on a “new journey” in 2023, casting off for sensible stretches of time the heavy woolen blankets of habit and familiarity, a life tethered to my phone and the Internet, and embarking on some, any actually, new path, a new way of being that is both spiritual and relgious, contemplative and action-oriented, seeking friends in the world of actual “in-person” people, and not exclusively online. As real and satisfying as that online virtual world is, it’s still a substitute for more tangible realities. And yet I want continue to hold onto and savor my ultimate comfort zone — solitude and aloneness. I can do that and not become a total recluse by living on the Internet, so to speak. In my ripening old age now, “change” whatever they is supposed to mean, is perhaps a peak too high to climb.

A “new journey?” How far will it take me if I decide to travel down the familiar roads I have been down before, but long, long ago and during a time when I had nothing much left to lose. Now I have old habits to lose that are obscuring the new life I imagine, and sometimes can envision, the “new journey” that is waiting for me, which actually awaits all of us if we can or need to find “The Way” and stick to that change of course. But do I want to go to all the trouble just because I feel guilty and “missing something” over the course of the last three years when I am retired from my job, and experienced the end of many years of caregiving for my mother who suffered with, but ultimately triumphed, over dementia. All during those many years of working full-time and caregiving, I had no time to think about, or even question the path I was on. I lived 36-hour days, but was not defeated or exhausted by this life of total purpose and usefulness to others, at work, and in fulfilling the daily demands of caregiving. Life unquestionably, and emphatically, had purpose. The idea of needing, or even wanting, a different life from now when I am once again alone, day after day, much more solitary than ever before, shouldn’t even be a question I ask myself, but I do. This is hard for people with immediate families, many friends, and unceasing activities to understand, quite naturally. But it’s my reality.

We can say to ourselves, “Those new journeys and life adventures are for the young.” Maybe my comforting routines and embrace of the Internet are what’s keeping me sane and connected in this darkening and polarized world. Maybe I don’t need to travel anymore. I shouldn’t feel guilty or useless if I don’t go out and volunteer with some cause beneficial to society. I feel I’ve paid my dues. I’m almost 72.

I’m still a seeker of knowledge and wisdom, as I have been my whole life, and I don’t have to continue that seeking by coming up with long lists of places to visit, and adventuring far from home. I want to proceed at an experiential and learning pace I feel comfortable with.

At my stage of life, the pressure is off to be somebody, go somewhere, or do something that’s not true to myself. Is the “new journey” merely wishful thinking, guilt, or conforming to illusory expectations?

What will it be: a “new journey,” or building on a past with its lessons learned and life-enhancing wisdom attained the hard way?