What an absolutely incredible stroke of fate!
I am currently reading Sherlock Holmes when I stumbled upon this quote:
"'I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.
"'A fool takes in all the lumber ... so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out ... he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools ... for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before.
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"'It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.'"
I find this especially telling, for not but a day before picking up this book, I was explaining this exact concept to my husband!
I am the type of person who enjoys mentally stimulating content: politics, religion, true crime, human psychology, etc. However, sometimes these subjects are also mentally exhausting. Most of the time, all that is really registered is yelling and chaos -- people screaming back and forth, invalidation, name calling, misinformation, etc.
The straw for me came a few nights ago while my husband was listening to some influencer drama. It was a woman, making up a false rape allegation, no less, and it truly solidified for me -- I don't want to be filling my head with anymore of this trife.
One has to figure, the human brain only has so much space readily available for valuable information, and filling it up with useless and destructive information means sifting through those tons of garbage in order to even locate the good stuff.
Like, I SHOULD know how to stitch together my own clothing, but instead I know that MrBeast worked with a pedophile! 😩
So, naturally, whenever I have to deal with something greater than myself -- in this case, addiction -- I turned to God. Yes, I was addicted; addicted to my phone. I possessed the self-control necessary to stop smoking but not to get off my phone!
If anything, my phone has been infinitely harder to quit because I couldn't escape it. Everybody has a phone, everybody is using it, and what's worse, everybody expects you to be doing the same thing.
I asked God for help! 🙏 I prayed to Him... "Lord, I am WEAK. I do not possess the self-control to stay off my phone, to not give into every comment that irks me. Please, God -- it takes me away from my family. I want to learn to live in the present again, and I ask that You please lend me Your strength to avoid all of Satan's influences."
That was about two weeks ago, and I am noticing tremendous improvement. Honestly -- without exaggeration -- I no longer engage in discourse, and I only use my phone to watch some shorts for maybe an hour or so throughout the day. Very little triggering content, although I have seen a few news stories, particularly of the beautiful little Athena... May God be with her family 🙏💛
The limited social media has positively affected my mood as well! Anxiety, anger, doom, and grief have virtually all dissipated. It feels incredibly revitalizing to be cut off and free from all of that chaos!
And, of course, all of the glory goes to God 🙏🙇♀️
