Allowing the Still Point ... when to stop looking

Maybe this sounds familiar to you - once I have found what I am looking for on my computer - many times I can't stop looking.

and I am fairly certain this "can't stop looking" thing will only get us into trouble - the kind of trouble that starts with a carpal tunnel injury and ends with our arrest on charges of peeping tommery because we just "can't stop looking"

I continue to search for more and more information until I am satisfied (rarely) or overwhelmed or something else catches my ever-shortening attention span and I begin another search.

What happens when we fill ourselves with more and more information without allowing the "still point" - the time and the space to absorb what we learn?

I think as artists we instinctively need to grow through experience and not through this "looking" thing -

and I think we instinctively reach for a connection.

It's why so many of us have blogs and talk to other makers in an attempt to make this big old internet a smaller more connected place - a place where the stuff that is real gets separated from the stuff that is not real - the place where we absorb; the place with a still point.

I would bet that one day some neurologist will discover that far from making our children smarter - by plopping their diaper clad butts in front of a laptop at 3 years old - we are changing their neural makeup -

forcing their brains, in an effort to keep up with this speed of information, to grow in unintended ways, leaving other parts of the brain to languish -

maybe the parts that would have created something much more amazing than anything a computer can show us - and that something will maybe never get created because those brain cells, the ones that make us artists, the ones that make us human, the ones that lead us to form connections with other people never had a chance - they were overrun by the brain cells that multiplied faster than rabbits in an effort to 'keep up' ... maybe this is the real computer virus ...

(sorry to be a downer Dora or maybe a downer Dora the Explorer as my niece would say)

I hope everyone is making some plans to unplug this summer - it is the perfect time for it - maybe seeking out other ways to gather information besides Google would be a good place to start since Google gets me in trouble - searches are like potato chips to me now, I just want more and more ...

xo

(also the perfect time to eat healthier and get outdoors and away from our computers - in fact, this was driven home to me just last week when I came to the sad realization that I was getting winded trying to unclog the nozzle on my spray butter ... luckily I could Google the problem and get the damn thing working)

*stillness mixed media print by mae chevrette