Disconnecting

Our TV stand juts up to the wall to the left of the front door.  Usually, our couch turns its back on the TV, instead facing the bookshelves and armchair on the opposite wall and the coffee table in between.  From this position, all seats in the living room provide excellent views of the real world through the two windows on adjacent walls, not to mention chicken-watching opportunities thanks to the four hens living across the street.  Most importantly, the people in the room become the focal point instead of those on the screen.

I arrived home from a run last Monday evening, opened the door, and found to my dismay that the couch was facing the TV, Dan and Keats were seated upon the couch, and the TV was on.  Why the dismay?  Not because I\’m TV-averse, but because we\’ve recently re-visioned Monday at home.  A colleague of mine piqued my interest mid-summer when she mentioned that her household was planning a No Media Monday.  No media?  No Facebook, no email, no iPhones, no TV to pull our attention from the real world to the cyber world?  Instead, time to sit, to think, to talk?  What a lovely, novel idea!

And so Dan, Keats, and I began our own version: Media-Free Monday.  We tried it out for the first time two weeks ago.  Thus, you can perhaps understand my dismay upon arriving home only one Monday later to discover the TV on.

Dan had a pretty good reason, though.

\”I thought we could be media-free tomorrow instead since we haven\’t been able to enjoy it together this evening,\” he explained.

Fair enough.

Thus, Tuesday became Tech-Free Tuesday.  Once we\’d tucked Keats up in bed, Dan and I sat in the living room, he on the armchair and me on the couch – facing away from the TV once more.  Dan, who is typically an avid reader of online informational text in the form of various news and political websites, plucked a book entitled Londoners off the shelf and began reading vignettes about our former city\’s various inhabitants.  This, in turn, led to a comment about missing London which then led to a conversation about where we\’ve been, where we are, and where we want to go.  It was the kind of conversation we used to frequently share before life got a little busier.  It was a conversation that helped me reflect on my own dreams, in addition to our combined ones.  I felt grounded in me and in us.