Week 7 – The Arrow of Focus…or The Focus of God…or Why I Deleted All Social Media and News Apps From My Phone

Sitting in my Thinking Chair^* yesterday morning, I deleted every social media, news app, apps whose last use I cannot recall, and apps that I mindlessly tap when I mindlessly grab my phone out of distraction, discomfort, or the slightest suggestion of boredom. I was pretty reckless about the whole thing, figuring that if I deleted something important by accident, the nature of technology today would make it easy to reinstall. Now that I have written that last sentence, I have feelings about the nature of society and the manipulation of technology, but I will resist the urge to digress. 

Before we get started here, I want to be clear what this is and what it isn’t. This is a strategy I am trying out. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps it provides a new perspective that leads to the actual thing I am supposed to do, or know, or understand, or consider. Maybe it lasts forever. I may have already reinstalled them by the time you read this – who knows? This is not a call for what you should or are supposed to be doing. This is not a condemnation, accusation, treatise, manifesto, rant, declaration, assertion (etc., etc.), of or on technology, social media, online trolls, internet journalism, screen time, doom scrolling (etc., etc). 

Ok, so yesterday, sitting in the thinking chair, I deleted all the apps. How did I get here, and why do I find it particularly interesting and/or important?

Earlier this week, I realized I was not asking myself the right questions. I have come to you roughly once a week since I have been here in Knoxville. More weeks than not, I am working through the complicated adjustment process of being, for the first time in my adult life, a party of one. Although I am not, in fact, a single woman with no kids, functionally, this is the demographic I fall into. This reorientation has been complicated and just not fun. I have shared my tears, my struggles, and my lack. In my sharing, you have encouraged, and I have moved forward. I am so appreciative. 

As this week went on, I realized that these feelings of loneliness and sadness persisted, and I wondered what new thing I could say about them. I was bored with the whole thing. If I am bored, you are certainly there. Not only am I bored with the thing, but it has the characteristics of a compounding emotion:

• I feel sad, I consider it, it makes me sadder
• This makes me feel guilty and ungrateful, that makes me sadder
• Now I start to have doubts about all of it, that makes me even sadder and angry.

So now, I am big sad and angry and guilty and ungrateful etc., etc. See how that works? Rather, do you see how that is the opposite of “works?” I know this is not sustainable, so I do the work. What am I avoiding? What am I afraid of? What is embarrassing? What do I not want to talk about? What is bringing me shame? 

And it crashes into me. On a beautiful day in my favorite greenspace on the campus that I prayed to be on, it was as clear as sky – I am not happy here. 

Gobsmacked! I simultaneously have three thoughts – this cannot be true, this absolutely is true, and I will never, ever say this out loud. 

This cannot be right. Y’all, I have spent the last 6 years of my life working towards this. Working hard. This goal is at least considered, and most often a significant factor, in every decision Mike and I have made. I have prayed for this. Prayed hard. I have watched God remove every obstacle, create every circumstance, and provide in every way to bring me to this moment. I question a great many things, but there are three things I am certain of: Jesus resurrected, Mike Trepagnier loves me, and I am supposed to be at the University of Tennessee. 

And I am not happy here. 

And I am going to say it out loud. I really wasn’t going to, and a part of me is a little shocked that I am. I thought the best course of action was to start a list of the stuff I would need to share one day – but today wasn’t that day. Folks get a little offended when you say things like this. Professionally, it comes with some baggage. I don’t need or want any of that. 

But there is more, and that’s where it gets good. 

This revelation brings awe and wonder – I love awe and wonder. But right after that, it makes me angry. If I am supposed to be here (and I am), and if I believe I have a purpose (and I do), then how can I not be happy? How can any of this be fair? How am I expected to do this successfully (and this is already not easy) for the next four or five years? Why would God bring me here like this? 

The answer is, I don’t know. But I do know he did. And I also know he never promised happiness; he never promised to make the road easy; he never promised that there would be no cross to carry. What he did promise was that he would never leave or forsake me, and he would walk with me. Sister Josephine said, “…you can feel sad, and you can feel lonely, but that doesn’t mean your vocation lacks joy. Sadness and loneliness are emotions. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit.”

Fruits of the Spirit, not emotions. 

If you follow me on social media, you may have come across my account of my not-so-great day last week. What wasn’t included (because I wasn’t going to say it out loud) was that this was also the day that I realized I was not happy. Looking at it now, I also did not express gratitude. Honestly, I knew I was being ungrateful when I wrote it; I just didn’t care. Sure, I said thanks to the parking folks and acknowledged the maintenance guy, but that was just me trying to remain polite and honest. It was not gratitude. It was not charity, joy, or peace. It was feelings, not fruits of the Spirit. My focus was off. 

I suppose one could argue that distraction distorts focus, while another one says distorted focus invites distraction. I honestly don’t care which came first. But sitting in my Thinking Chair yesterday, I realized I was chronically distracted. I have the opportunity to study Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God this week. While doing a bit of research, I found the video Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God: The Malaise of Colonial Modernity, by Dr. Ato Quayson, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. By minute 24, I realized I had no idea what was going on because I had no focus. It was first thing in the morning; I was drinking my coffee, thinking about my day, checking my email, scrolling the socials. It didn’t occur to me that the video was not clocking in my brain for 24 minutes. What am I doing here? 

I’ll tell you – I am justifying behavior. What I want to do is nothing. I want to doom scroll and drama watch and become indignant on all the ridiculousness happening on social media platforms because it is easier than trying to discern if a postcolonial lens shapes a neomodern/post-post-modernism reading, and if it does, what does it do, and should it be doing that, and how can I read the text better? So, if the video is playing, I can pretend like I am using my time productively while not actually doing anything at all. I am distracted; I have no focus. Moreover, I am intentionally distracted, ergo my lack of focus is also intentional. 

This is the part that is important. So, now I have to ask myself if I am living in such a way that honors the place I am in right now. Do my actions reflect my intention of sanctifying the work? No and no. So, if my actions are disordered, then my virtues (a habitual and firm disposition to do the good) will be disordered, and the fruits of the Spirit (namely joy in this case) are going to elude me. 

For a good part of the morning, I have attempted to track down a cited source that supports what appears to be the commonly accepted idea that “arrow of God” comes from an Igbo proverb where the arrow is a representation of a person or event that effectuates the will of God. For now, we are just going to go with it. This realization that I am not happy here is my “arrow of God”. It has led me to realize that distraction creates separation and separation creates loneliness and sadness.

It is not that I am unhappy here because happiness is irrelevant. Whatever place I am in, my relationship, my closeness to God, should show its fruits, regardless of emotions.

It is that I have separated myself through distraction. 

I am certain that deleting the socials and stuff from my phone is not a cure-all. But it was the one, concrete, actionable item I could take in that moment, so I took it. Let’s see what fruit falls from this tree. 

* Looking for the picture of the Thinking Chair, I realize that I haven’t yet introduced or moved the introduction posts over to this platform…I will fix it soon.