Day 27: Self-Compassion and Technology

Welcome to 40 Days of Mindfulness and Compassion Day 27!

 

Lecture

Like many in the modern world, my life has been gradually subsumed by technology. It offers many conveniences as well as challenges and burdens. For instance, email is a way to quickly send or request information. In a relatively short amount of time, I can send information to multiple individuals and groups and request useful or necessary information from others. But, there is also the constant pressure of having to monitor email accounts for important or relevant messages that hold important information or require responses.

For me, email was once a convenience and is now a necessity. It is part of my life that I cannot separate from. It is required for many domains of my life, both professional and personal, and the amount of daily time that I must devote to it seems to continue to grow. And so, it is a necessity that I cannot escape from, and one that offers convenience and opportunity as well as stress, demand and burdens.

Another domain of technology that is obviously front and center is social media. This is a domain of existence that burst onto the scene not that long ago and now has an enormous and growing impact on how modern individuals communicate, conduct business and develop self-identity. Like many, I struggle with how to effectively utilize platforms of social media. For me personally, it offers many unprecedented opportunities for connection and learning. For example, I am in touch with many people from my past that would not have occurred without social media and have re-kindled very meaningful relationships. Social media also offers the regular opportunity for me to gather interesting and educational information. Thus, for me, it has had positive impacts on human relationships and self-development. But again, it comes with challenges and burdens.

It can be beneficial, and sometimes necessary, but also can trigger compulsions and difficult emotional states and thoughts. Social media use can lead to information overload and stress. It can feel good, and then suddenly turn into overload. My emotional state can go from calm and focused to envious, discouraged or angry in just a matter of minutes.

Technology, then, is an integral part of life that I cannot escape and has great impact, both for better and worse, on my well-being. As such, it is an important domain of life that will benefit from investigation with the tools of mindfulness.

This personal reflection is in no way intended to serve as an analysis that can be generalized but rather, as a first-person mini-testimony of some of the effects of technology use in the modern age. Each person exists in a unique situation, and it is incumbent on each to reflect on her or his own relationship to technology. This reflection also does not address macro issues regarding modern relationships to technology, such as social ethics, justice, and law. This self-reflection and practice that are offered today explore mindfulness and compassion as tools to explore personal relationships with technology.

As technology becomes a more and more central part of modern life, it is incumbent for each individual to develop a unique personal ethic regarding the use of technology. Today, this will be cultivated through a practice involving self-compassion.

Compassion is often, I think, thought of as a feeling. A common “lay”description of compassion that I hear often while teaching Compassion Cultivation Training is that it involves feeling bad for someone. But, compassion involves much more than feeling. A central component of compassion is understanding. For instance, to have compassion for someone I must understand that he or she is suffering. The degree to which I understand the suffering will be strongly correlated (but not the only factor) with the degree of compassion. And in terms of compassion for oneself, an understanding of my own suffering can be the gateway to both an improved relationship to my own suffering as well as an increased ability to foster compassion for others.

 

Meditation Tips

Meditation Tip #27: Be a Scientist of your own experience. At best, science asks a question and examines possible answers to that question in an open, rigorous, objective and curious manner. We should take this same attitude to our own experiences.

 

Meditation

Day 27: Self-Compassion and Technology

 

 

 Self-Reflective Activity

As you begin to communicate via technology or to engage in social media, pause and reflect on your motivation and state of mind. You might ask yourself questions such as: Why am I going this? What do I intend? What is my current emotional state?

 

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