Twitter Schmitter: the absolute beauty of total disconnection

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry

This past weekend, I lay on my porch by the shores of Lake Willoughby in Vermont’s remote and wild Northeast Kingdom as a major thunderstorm crept across the water towards me, its dark grey claws raking the water, its growl making the whole cottage shake. I counted the seconds between the flashes of lightning and the rumble to gauge the distance:
4 miles….
3 miles…
2 miles…
1 mile…

It was, in short, a great time for a nap.  I put my hands under my head and relaxed, listening rapturously as the torrential rain came – a vast rushed rustle of rain; two loons were singing there, too. And the great claps of thunder drumming and howling above it all.

I fell sound asleep, with the last thought in my mind: nobody is going to wake me up. There’s no phone in the cottage. My cell phone is way out of coverage. I could not send or receive a clever Tweet. My Facebook page was not updated to tell the world I was having a nap. LinkedIn could not inform my colleagues of my latest success.

I slept like a baby.

I’m not saying that all these connections and social networks are a bad thing. But oh, how nice it is to unplug all the infernal contraptions once in a while and let in all the other wonderful and beautiful parts of the world.  And by finding them, let everything go.