With their unique style and their own sensitivity, artists present their vision of the world around us. This week, we give carte blanche to Dany Turcotte.
We all know that kind person in our circle who makes it their duty to come and whisper in our ear the importance of learning to live in the present moment. We find her to be sentimental, naive and irritating, but I’m starting to think that maybe she’s right.
Bridling your brain to prevent it from retrogressing or anticipating is not easy. This untamable wild horse that is our brain has this natural tendency to wallow in memory or to want to know everything in advance, which pushes it to ignore what is happening before its eyes.
Screens are amazing tools, but they also pollute our lives. They are light years away from the sweet pleasure of the present moment. People walking their dogs without even looking at them, too busy savoring with their eyes the video of a mother white-headed red monkey licking her baby with big black eyes on TikTok. The dog is practically strangled at the end of his leash while his owner is just as strangled at the end of his phone.
Moms who incidentally have a baby in a stroller, which could easily be replaced by a sack of potatoes without them even noticing, so much are their eyes glued to this 6.06-inch glow, envying the photos of the neighbor who proudly displays her new Botox injections.
Unfortunately, we are much more often in screen time than in the present time. The return to this blessed moment of now is essential. These delicious moments when our brain stops a little to simply take the time to appreciate the wind, the light, the colors, the smells and the sounds. Let our senses do their work without artifice. Obviously, much easier to write than to do. As currently, you are reading this text in the moment, but the “ADHD sprinter” nesting under your hair is only looking to escape to other thoughts.
With all the possibilities of technological distractions, the present time has practically disappeared from our lives. We are faced with fireworks and our first instinct is to film it so that we can prove to others that we witnessed it. We swim in the absurd and this has the effect of drowning the present. Our phone memories are filled with moments that we ultimately did not actually witness. When we die, our clouds will be overloaded while we float obediently on our clouds, our heads empty of real memories.
This insatiable appetite to store evidence of happiness has become a public health problem. When the photo of the plate is more important than its taste, we can start talking about pathology.
Social media has become our artificial paradises, a powder, not to the nose, but to the eyes, a pollock version of true pleasure. We publish without restraint excerpts of our lives on our virtual windows. We are constantly preoccupied with trying to prove to others that our days are full and beautiful. Now, our weekends can unfortunately be summed up in a story 30 seconds. We will capture on video excerpts of moments that we stage in order to produce proof on Instagram that they were unforgettable when in truth, we were mentally absent, too busy wanting to document it. We must constantly feed the gaze of others with mold, to such an extent that we forget to satisfy our own. My weekend is better than yours.
THE likes obtained keep the dopamine pedal pressed to the floor, this formidable drug to which the creators of these platforms knew we were firmly addicted. This frenetic and exhausting race for appearances slows down the moment considerably. Let us collectively wish for a return of the pendulum. To give a damn about the gaze of others to concentrate on the essential, to give time to the present, to live the moment rather than filming it for later. This present that will never return. Every second devoted to feeding the beast is a second lost in our very short existences. Without going so far as to dream of weekends without technology where we would cut the power from Friday to Sunday evening, we could simply try to be aware of our collective dependence on appearances to the detriment of being. To offer ourselves the luxury of unplugged moments to let our brains gambol freely. To give ourselves windows of appreciation of the present moment. Putting a “Do Not Disturb” sign on our social media door, being present in mind to savor certain precious moments more. Not checking our emails for 45 minutes to give all our time to a person we love will surely not put the planet in more danger than it already is.
I admit that in this ode to the present there is a certain nostalgia for the pre-internet era. Just the right amount of imagination to occupy our minds without the eye candy that our devices dish out to us without restraint. Keep this goal in mind: to escape from the virtual world in order to better immerse ourselves in reality. Please do not disturb, I am in the present moment!
What do you think? Express your opinion