What I Learned on My FB Sabbatical
/My last Facebook status one week ago was, “Will be taking a bit of a sabbatical from Facebook. See you FB friends when I come
back. Blessings!” I picked last Thursday the 12th on purpose because I was going to be away from the computer for a good three days and did not have to white knuckle it through the de-tox!! You laugh but unfortunately it is true.
Immediately after posting the status, I received an email from a friend asking me about it. Others have stopped me in meetings and said, “Facebook sabbatical. Are you ok?” I even received a phone call from a friend checking on me because of my status.
To all inquires, my response was the banality of Facebook. Banality is a word I learned from John Piper as he explained why he did not have a TV in his home when his boys were growing up and I thought it applied to me with Facebook. The Oxford Dictionary used synonyms for banality such as triteness, unimaginativeness, lack of originality and my favorite, prosaicness.
There are lots of things I like about Facebook but for me it had become some such a time waster. And I was wasting time over such trite things as someone complaining about the traffic or how long the carpool line was. Instead of checking status updates, why not patiently wait at the light or riding the elevator down to the first floor? If I was at dinner alone, why not be still and relax instead of reading about someone else’s dinner? My mind is already on overdrive, why was I making it even crazier filling it with trivia?
So, does this mean I will never be on Facebook again and I am closing down my account? Not at all. But I am being mindful of the time I spend on it and I will try and capture those moments of stillness so that I can know God even better. (Psalm 46:10)
