You wake up in the morning, half of your face ready to prepare for the day ahead, the other half in anguish and disgust of having to abandon sleep. Eyes half-dead, the corner of your mouth still dripping with drool, existential angst creeps in: “Why was I born?”, “Is living really worth it”- such scurrying questions float in the sea of your mind without an appropriate answer, at least until a fly lands on your face and you unintentionally slap yourself into a positive head space, ready to take on the world.

Just when you were regaining perspective and looking forward to the day, immediately your phone is in your hand. You’re sucked into the world of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others. As texts and enticing pictures from these outlets flash before your eyes, half an hour is already lost, thus further reinforcing the anxiety, making you dread going to school or work.

After a long day, you crack a beer, dish your vanilla ice cream or order pizza, or whatever blows steam. Next on the list is entertainment of course; be it binge-watching series or being Lionel Messi’s manager on Fifa, or being lost in your music playlist whilst again lost in people’s lives on social media. At least for a few hours. Then say a prayer of gratitude and call it a day. The next day and the next thereafter take a similar structure, with the same pattern of behavior.

“What am I doing with my life?”, “Am I over my past lover?”, “Would my parents be proud of me if they were still alive?” We have all these personal and deep-seated questions that are rarely answered; instead we shove them into a jar with a label ‘to be solved someday, maybe’.

A large part of our lives is just incoherent noise, with a flattened indecisive note like the last shriek of a dying goat during slaughter. We can’t stand ourselves, the ‘self’, is an object we seek out to obliterate. Whenever we’re alone and silence creeps into a room, and we are expected to be leisurely and to enjoy boredom, we retaliate harshly, with as much self-harming as possible. Anything but to be alone with ourselves. And then we wonder when society seems to produce degenerates.

The noise we’ve built around our lives stops us from resolving or scratching the surface of the traumas we’ve accumulated since childhood. The world is a dealer of habits, allowing us to find an escape in everything but ourselves. Just when you think technology, jobs and schools, are enough, we jump from one relationship to another, and maintain false friendships, trying to close some void inside we cannot identify. When one is not hooked by one addiction, it’s another. This leads to a bloodbath, where someone bleeds from their past wounds onto others. This creates a nasty cycle that rubs from one generation to the next.

This is not a verbal onslaught on our day-to-day routines, but rather a call for awareness. To come to terms with past traumas, thus to seek help from a therapist, church and/or loved ones. Instead of dedicating all of our time to school work and our jobs and entertainment, we should spare some time on doing absolutely nothing. We need to stretch our being like the limbs of the octopus, and listen to our thoughts, meditate on what we want out of life, and reflect on the things that have happened and are happening to us. We need to learn to be child-like, and pick a creative hobby. Spare some time for nature away from all the buzz we’ve created. Get into gardening, Yoga. Anything but the noise of the world.

We are a destroyed society, with a phone at hand keeping us entertained and captive. Adverts all over, insinuating that we’re not well-dressed, well-travelled, or that our bodies aren’t curvy enough, ripped enough, or slim enough. Shallow, hording the next best thing, and always trying to embellish ourselves. Everything washes into our lives in one big swoosh, making us uneasy in the mind and spirit.

So, even if it means giving ourselves away to silence for just an hour, let us put our gadgets away, turn our music off, and put our school and work assessments aside. We ought to fight to make life worth living. Let’s make it a habit to heal and forgive ourselves and others.

Tell us: do you spend too much time getting sucked into social media? What are healing habits you would like to develop?