Look Up

I look up searching for answers to the things that I can not understand. Intently staring into the blankness of my field of vision — scanning for insight, observations, solutions.

This cloud holds a lot more information than I can assess, and the brightness hurts my eyes.

Maybe I’ll close them and listen to the tweets of the creatures that buzz around me, each asserting their own selfish claim too a unique perspective. Narcissists, we’re all just screeching for attention, following each other, pleading for attention and acceptance, desperate to be assured that we are different enough to be interesting but similar enough to be accepted. What’s new?

But it’s getting harder to feel connected to anything at all. I feel numb and my legs have fallen asleep from sitting, silently disconnected.

Though they say we’re closer than we’ve ever been. They’ve tapped into our open secret that we’ll never be satisfied. So they adapt their strategy and update our ritual. They tell us we deserve better. No need to fact check they said we could trust them, and everyone believes the loudest prophets.

But then why and I so confused? Why does everything have to be moving so fast? What if I don’t want it to?

And why is all that is supposed to make us stronger make me feel so much weaker? And my body moves slower than it once did.

All that consumes me is virtual, intangible. I am disengaged, unattached, yet overwhelmed.

Now I can type but I can’t spell. I can skim but I can’t read. I can search but I can not find.

And I won’t look up at the sky anymore (it’s too slow), only down at the screen that imitates it (in HD!).

Reaching out to the unknown, towards my keyboard where the world is at my finger tips… just a click away.

When I look up, am I supposed to be comforted by empty space? Shouldn’t I be humbled by what I don’t know?

No, instead I’ll look it up, arrogantly.

Because, with technology in my hand, in my mind, I am unstoppable.

There is nothing the natural world can do to defeat me: any remaining mysteries can be divulged by Siri.

I am addicted, trapped, unable to break my dependency.