Hyperstimulae

My eyes flicker between the Christmas tree and the tee-vee. Lights flicker, demand something of me. I have a hard time focusing, but most of us will. Check my phone, 'cause I can't sit still.

I like the movie well enough, but the only way I can focus on it fully is if I set my phone on the desk, across the room from where I'm sat. Otherwise, I'll keep checking it, and induce myself into this sort of coma of loneliness and depression, because no one's demanded my attention for a full 3 minutes.

We all claim to crave silence and stillness, but sometimes, I forget how to handle such things. If you left me alone in a room without a phone, I'd probably decide nobody liked me, and kill myself.

And then, there's the Christmas tree. I left the lights blinking seizure-like, even though I knew they'd be disconcerting. Wanna know a sad truth? They're not. They're just one more chaotic, spasming element clamouring for attention in the too-brief night. I give one eye to them, and one eye to Joaquin Phoenix, and the third eye, the one inside my left hand, where the fingertips have grown agile and skilled, goes ~ as ever ~ to the phone screen.

Anyone, yet? Not just, but you never know. Better keep checking.

Are movies dying? Might be. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's scrolling online, and texting aimlessly with a friend, and checking some obscure fact I simply must forget in the next moment. Two whole hours? I ain't got time. And it's becoming increasingly hard for anyone to spare that much.

The problem isn't length, but also quality. Complex thirty minute episodes are just as upsetting, because who wants a programme where they'll miss something crucial, if they check Instagram real quick? That'll just have them feeling bad.

Solution's simple. We gotta kill movies. Anything complex that demands our attention, our compassion, our intellect, needs to be stifled, because it's proving too much for our dead-end, glucose brains.

Either that, or we de-stimulate ourselves. Turn off the Christmas tree lights, or just tone down to a more tranquil setting. Put the phone in another room. On someone else's table. Under a different bed, so we forget about the world not calling for us for a moment.

The problem isn't the abundance of stimuli, it's lack of self-control. It's never the assortment of candies that causes illness, it's the compulsion to try every single one.
You can't be enjoying cinematic mastery, and scrolling your phone. Your brain can't handle it. But we've somehow tricked ourselves into thinking we gotta, so that when the lights switch off, we reach for our comforting sleeping app to make some noise, else things run depressingly quiet.

Isn't that a frightful element of human existence? White noise? Soundscapes? Oh trust me, no need to preach to the converted. I need my rain pitter-patter, if I'm to sleep peacefully because heaven forbid my world simply fall quiet. Not for long. Soon enough, I'll be a-sleeping, and my paranoic, schizoid brain will brush into overdrive. But just for a moment of quiet, even that we must kill.

We've grown disused to the quiet, and it's giving us terrible anxiety.

So we need to re-accustom ourselves before a full-fledged life-long panic attack. The answer, sadly, will never be in adding another stimulant to the mix. So by rights, we must subtract.

Why do we do it? We're scared life's short because it is, and we've somehow convinced ourselves we can trick it, make it longer. If I listen to some tunes and write this post, I'm squeezing more out of life than if I was merely concentrating on one.

There's only so many hours in a day, and if I hypertax my nervous system enough, I may just tick off all my markers.

...it doesn't work. Just serves to create an unsafe space for your mind to rest in. Overstimulation leads to a sort of exhaustion of the soul. Brings mind to its knees, begging to know how to make things go quiet. And do you really want to spend this brief while on your knees?

So how do you de-stimulate? Depends what's stimulating you. Rules seem to help. Most of us seem to enjoy a strict set of rules, in some perverse way or another. It's why social structure and despotism work so well. So let's figure out rules. What works, and where does it become too much? Can you take the lights, and the phone, and the music, and the movie, and the chat, and the neighbors, and the noise outside, and the cars, and the streetlamp, and lunar explosion, and starlight?

Thought not.