dis-trac-tion. Noun: 1. A thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else. 2. Something that serves as a diversion or entertainment. 3. Extreme mental or emotional disturbance; obsession.
There are so many distractions in the world. TV. Movies. Video games. Internet. Facebook. People. All these things distract us from our daily routines and the jobs we should be doing. How many times have you spent hours watching a truly awful television programme simply because it is saving you from doing housework? Or how often have you spent an entire evening chatting utter nonsense with people because its better to have meaningless conversations rather than spend the evening by yourself? Are movies and TV used as a kind of escapism to get away from the real world for a while or watch how life could work out differently. Do you ever find yourself still up at 1am because you've got addicted to a video game or got carried away on Facebook?
One of my biggest traits it that I'm easily distracted. Like,
really easily distracted. At work I'm constantly finding myself in the middle of 5 or 6 jobs at the same time because I'll get distracted during one job and then move onto something else, I'll leave dinner in the oven for an hour and a half because I've been caught up playing a video game, and people are always moaning at me for not hearing from me because I'll start replying to a text message but then something else will get my attention and it will be a couple of days before I remember I've not replied. So why am I, like so many other people, distracted so easily?
Personally I think it's because we live for distractions. Rather than them being annoying nuisances stopping us doing what we need to do, distractions are the things we desire, the things we need to get through life, and keep us happy. Take them all out of the equation and what are we left with? Just over a year ago I came out of a long term relationship and had a kind of 6 week rebound thing. I threw myself wholeheartedly into it despite the fact that (unknowingly at the time) the person was completely unsuitable and it would never have worked out in the long run. I was simply using it as a distraction from the bigger picture, like some kind of automatic defence mechanism, it saved me from having to deal with the really unpleasant stuff and instead focus on any little bit of happy stuff I thought I could get. And with the online world growing ever stronger I see it more and more as time goes by: people chatting to random people online, getting caught up in the excitement of someone new until that excitement starts to fade slightly and then it's onto someone else.
We're all looking for that next new thing, something to keep our minds busy and alive, whether it's a new game, movie, or new person in our lives, but what is it really we are distracting ourselves from? What is it we are stopping ourselves seeing? If we strip back all the distractions until we are left with just ourselves, perhaps we don't like what we are left with?
That is all.
