In absence lies the opportunity to become present

Who has not caught themselves using the myriad of tools disguised as useful that the virtual world of the Internet tirelessly offers? Do you know what I am talking about? I am talking about the terrifying realization of the autonomy of the gesture on the surface of a touchscreen. This diagonal and pointless search through countless pages and digital profiles, just to “pass the time”: when you no longer see anything on the screen and only witness the autonomous movement of the hand: a touch that is already insensitive to the surface.

Yes?…

Very good. I will talk about the spatio-temporal hiatus.

In this sense, and to create a possible dialog on this subject, it seems necessary to reflect on this fragile revelation. To be aware of this moment is to acknowledge this simple and fragile evidence that increasingly reflects the general habits of the cosmopolitan environment.

I am sure that the reader is already wondering about the content of the text. But in reality everything seems to be more complicated than it is. You have probably already skimmed the first few words, and if you have reached this point — where your reading is already in agreement with my text — it is because you somehow feel an uneasiness and perhaps a strange empathy with the central theme of this article: Absence.

It’s interesting. The idea that the moment we decide to visit our relatives or even go on a well-deserved vacation, there is an impulse — an unconditional force — that pushes us into a syncopated routine of “planning,” “booking,” and “paying” to compensate for the absence. In this case, on the one hand, it is the desire to visit our dearest absentees, while on the other hand, we long to be absent from our daily lives. A strange paradox, don’t you think? However, the moment you take your phone out of your pocket and start communicating with the interactive virtual world, there seems to be no turning back: The successive touches on the magical surface are more than countless. We even forget that finding a cheap flight is thanks to the guaranteed — sometimes invisible — functioning of a multitude of hard drives, servers, operators, controllers, programmers, customer service phone lines and many other services and people in charge who respond to all our requests 24 hours a day, every day of the year and, above all, with a smile. And, of course, we must not forget the enormous flow of watts that support all this desire to “get away” for a few moments.

If you were to ask me, “And what should I make of this?” I would answer: possibly, the permanent detour of attention works in our society. And that: questioning the assertiveness of active impulses can reward the clarity and lucidity of a good conclusion. Do we evaluate our habits with accuracy? Anything we do regularly that rewards us in some way with a sense of pleasure or discomfort forms the pillars of a new habit. However, if we emphasize the more interactive side of this composition, we should note that the common element of the above rewards is probably gesture: the will to interact: a variety of executed bodily movements — independent of emotions and therefore purely mechanical — that build a body memory that motivates rewards. By this I mean, to give a trivial example, that it is easy to explain what many smokers call “hand addiction.” Here, in our interaction with the world (even virtual), where the hand is one of the most effective interfaces with this sphere called reality, we only have to think about the value of the gesture as a habit and about the extreme dependence on digital interfaces due to the immediate reward of emotions. In this sense, and if you allow me, dear reader, the best way to change a habit is to create another habit.

But do it in moderation, because a lot can happen between the urge to touch and the movement of your finger.

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