Clickbait vs. Clouds: The Case for Spending More Time in Nature and Less Time with your Phone
We seem to know it intuitively: Time spent in nature is good for body and soul. Science is catching up with this intuition, publishing praises of the natural world, tidal waves of studies documenting nature’s myriad benefits. Want to decrease stress hormones, improve your mood, lessen your anxiety, enhance your concentration, improve your sleep, lower your blood pressure, or boost your immune function? (Umm, of course you do, we are in the middle of a pandemic!) Well then, step outside!
Locked down and stressed out, even indoorsy families are planting gardens and heading out on hikes. Maybe your family is also spending more time outside than you did in your pre-covid life. Maybe the blossoms and the open sky (if you’re lucky enough to be in a place where you can enjoy them) allow you brief moments of forgetfulness, a break from the anxiety of global and personal crises. I’ve been in love with nature—with the harsh grandeur of mountains and the breath stealing beauty of the tiniest wildflowers—for most of my life. So when I read poems about nature’s capacity to soothe our anxiety, like this gem from Wendell Berry, my soul cries yes, yes, yes!
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
There are times when my path through anxiety and despair mirrors Wendell’s, leading me into the natural world. I wake in the night, anxious and far too alert, and so I gaze out the window at the stars, I listen to the wind in the trees, appreciate the rise and fall of my breath, and let the whole of this terrible, wonderful world be part of my experience. My nine-year-old asks me when the pandemic will be over, when he can see his friends, whether anyone he knows will die. I wish for tidy answers that I don’t have, and the anxiety climbs to the top of my throat. But we snuggle (me, my son, and our anxiety), we talk, and we go play outside—living our way into answers that are untidy, that defy words, and that comfort nonetheless. Under the generous boughs of our backyard maple tree, the world feels sane, and for a moment in time, we feel sane, too. Sane, and dare I say it? Free.
I don’t always choose this path in the face of anxiety, though. Sometimes I don’t want to let the anxiety join us in our snuggle—or in any other part of our day. Sometimes I’m tired of it, tired of bravely allowing hard emotions and tired of transcending them. I just want them to go away—want this whole situation that we are in to go away. In these more muddle moments, I don’t always reach for the loving arms of Mother Nature. Guess who often seems closer, more accessible? My smartphone. It’s so bright, so flashy, so portable, so omniscient, so omnipresent! It doesn’t comfort me, exactly, but it distracts me from the fact that I need comforting, which is a great if transient comfort. The poetry of such nights (and days) sounds like this:
When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake to the unrest of silence
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I open up Facebook and I scroll
through lives of pain wrapped in smiling pictures.
I leap into the vacuum of Netflix
rather than tax my soul with awareness
of grief. I am absorbed in the current of input.
Swallowed in blue light, buzzing confusion,
I feel nothing. For a time
I am pulled into tangles of Web, and am . . . distracted.
I’m sorry, Wendell. Please forgive me this utter desecration of your poem. The thing is, I’m quarantining not only with stars, but also with social media—with clouds and clickbait, with explosions of new blossoms and explosions of breaking news. Most mornings, I start strong. I ooh and ahh over the sunrise, I savor my coffee, I count my blessings. As the day progresses, though, the phone-grabbing reflex ineluctably takes over. I survive another tantrum by my four-year-old (barely), and I scroll through my Facebook feed, where I am greeted by my friends’ children, all of them very well behaved, I’m sure, and beaming as they hold up their Pinterest-worthy craft projects. I gently suggest to my eleven-year-old for the thirteenth time that maybe, for the love of God, he could finally sit down and finish his math work, and all the while my eyes trace the images of covid curves, some steep, some flattening.
I don’t just stare at my phone. I play with my kids, write, cook, clean, and talk with family and friends. I get outside multiple times every day, savoring my walks to the compost pile and the mailbox as one might savor the solemn and giddy march up the aisle of a wedding chapel. I garden or at least poke around to see what’s growing. And I go for a walk or a run every day.
At the end of any given day, if I reflect back and recall the best moments, most of them will have been moments I spent outside—laughing at the antics of my mud-smeared preschooler, smiling at the play of wind and light against the leaves of my favorite tree, shooting hoops with my older boys, walking barefoot through the grass.
I could also look back at the end of just about any day with this question: “Which moments do I wish I could do over?” There are parenting flops, of course, that I would love to have a redo on. But most of the moments that I wish I could redo are moments when I tuned out of my real life—my kids, the spring weather, and even the difficult emotions stirred by this pandemic. I regret the excess of minutes and hours taken from my real life and given to the digital world. Some of what the internet offers is interesting, uplifting, informative, even awe-inspiring. Most of it is not.
At Red Oaks, we are dedicated to getting kids out in nature. We are dedicated to getting everyone out in nature! We think and talk a lot about socioeconomic barriers like lack of green space and lack of transportation. For many parents now, who are struggling to work from home while caring for children, lack of time is also a significant barrier. For me, though (and I suspect for many of you), the thing that stands between me and the full range of healing benefits that nature offers is not a literal lack of time or access. It’s my own habits.
This is not a self-flagellation. Nor is it a call to self-discipline or a paean to willpower. All I’m saying is this: I’ve decided to make it a little easier for myself to reap the benefits of time in nature by making it a little harder for myself to reflexively grab my phone.
Here’s how I’m going about it. About a week ago, I moved my phone charger to the opposite side of my bedroom and decided I wouldn’t pick it up until after I’ve had my coffee. It’s felt so good to start my day with the glow of the sunrise rather than the glow of my phone that I’ve found myself pushing phone time back even further. New plan: I’m not going to use my phone (except to listen to music) until after I’ve brushed my teeth. And since I don’t brush my teeth until after I’ve read or written, had my coffee, eaten breakfast, made the kids breakfast, washed the dishes, and gotten dressed, and since I often don’t bother getting dressed until I’m intending to head outside, this means that at least an hour or two of my day will roll past before I’m bombarded with news or notifications.
I’ve been enjoying deliberate periods of separation from my phone for about a week now, and something interesting has happened. First, it’s been shockingly easy to not pick up my phone when it’s all the way across the room from my bed. And once I’ve made it through the first few out-of-bed minutes of my day without tethering the phone to my eyes or hip, the itch to do so fades. When the phone is at hand, there are always things I need to google, things I need to check on. When it’s not, the measuring stick of what I need to do is very different.
Once the phone returns to my hand or pocket or the table next to me, my compulsive behavior tends to kick back in. Google all the things! Fight the injustices on Facebook! Read all the news! My phone-free mornings have been so lovely, though, that I’ve been finding myself missing them once I get sucked into the digital world later in the day. Solution: march my phone back upstairs and return it to its charger. When I go back downstairs again, it is literally easier to walk outside and lounge in the grass or weed the garden or smile at the flowers than it is to go upstairs and get my phone. It’s suddenly easier to sit with my emotions than to try to numb them, easier to play with my kids than to ignore them, easier to notice and appreciate the good.
Each of us is unique. Maybe your phone doesn’t present a barrier to being present or to getting outside. Maybe your phone is so essential for your work that you have to keep it on you at all times. Regardless of your circumstances, ask yourself this: would you like to spend more time connecting with nature than you do at present? If the answer is yes, how can you make that easier?
I would love to hear your answers, but here are a few little ideas to help get you started. Put a plant on your desk, open your curtains and windows, set a reminder on your phone to step outside (even if you can only spare a few minutes), print photos of natural settings that you love and put them on display, make your phone calls from your backyard, or log the time you spend outside and have a friendly competition with loved ones. Create new excuses to step outdoors: plant a garden or even just one or two flowers that need tending. Make a goal to identify all the trees in your neighborhood. Track the miles you walk each week. Pick up trash (with gloves and a picker so you don’t expose yourself to germs). Download a birding app and try to identify one new bird each day for a week.
The people who are most successful at making healthy lifestyle changes—whether it be spending more time outside, getting more exercise, or consuming less negative media—tend to be the people with the fewest barriers to behavior change. And so I’m not calling myself or anyone else to greater self-mastery. I’m extending an invitation to notice that some barriers aren’t fixed—they are movable, pliant, flexible if we approach them creatively.
This moving of an unfixed barrier (back upstairs you go, Apple spawn!) is my gift to myself. I’m giving myself the gift of more time to connect with the present moment and the natural world—a place big enough to hold my grief and fear and rage and pain and still leave room for air, sunlight, flowers, and starlight.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Thomas is the nature-lovin' mama of three nature-lovin' boys. In her free time, you'll most likely find her reading, writing, running (it's more of a waddle, really), or rock climbing.