Josh Radnor, star of the CBS series How I Met Your Mother and writer, director, and star of the Sundance Audience Award-winning movie happythankyoumoreplease (due out in theaters late summer) was the latest celebrity to take our Sabbath Manifesto “Unplug Challenge,” connecting to life without technology for 24 hours last weekend.
He wrote about his experience in the Huffington Post:
No Music
This was a big one for me. I listen to a lot of music. I’d agreed to do a weeklong workshop of a new play at the South Coast Repertory Theater, so I had an hour-long drive down to Costa Mesa Saturday morning. With no music in the car, I did the next best thing: I sang. Like the titular hot tub time machine, I found myself zapping back to my past, unearthing long forgotten melodies I learned in the Reagan era. The first song that popped into my head was the summer camp classic, “The Other Day I Met A Bear.” (“A great big bear, oh way up there…” Anyone, anyone?) I made it through a few verses and got bored. Next (and I have no idea where these were coming from), I hit the great Gershwin tune, “Our Love Is Here To Stay,” and was shocked to hear myself – on this day of all days – arrive at the following lyric:
The radio and the telephone and the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies and in time may go
But oh, my dear, our love is here to stay.
The song was written in 1938 (just Googled it, natch) and I find it amusing that even then, Ira Gershwin noted that all that newfangled technology could be a thorn in our collective side.
No E-mail, No Texting
Here’s the problem: I don’t like who I’ve become when my iPhone is within reach. I find myself checking e-mails and responding to texts throughout the day with some kind of Pavlovian ferocity – it’s not a conscious act, but a reflexive one. I’m not the first to point out that great modern paradox: the more “connected” we get, the fewer true connections we seem to be making. When my eyes and fingers are locked on the iPhone, yes, I’m connecting to people in my life, albeit connection of the electronic variety. But I’m intensely disconnected from whatever’s actually happening around me in that moment.
Whatever the case, I prefer 2010 to 1986. I’ve never cast my lot with the “things-were-better-way-back-when” crowd. If I favor integration over reversion – and that seems the only real option – the question is: how does one navigate a life in this wired world without turning into a robot? Technological advancements are always morally neutral and like with all things, there’s an upside and a downside. The trick, it seems to me, is to find a way to not go unconscious – to be, as they say, in the world, but not of it.
I’m still working out exactly how to do that, but some ritualized unplugging seems a good place to start. It really was a very nice 24 hours – I saw some friends, I sang in my car with the windows down, I rehearsed a wonderful play with some talented folks, I saw my niece and nephew and had a really nice dinner with my sister. Nothing flashy. But it felt real, slower. I could almost hear myself breathing. I’m pretty sure I was alive.”
Read his entire column here.