I was thinking of myself and my middle school students, and the time we waste on screens. I don't like it for me or for them. Since this life is finite, it keeps us from those things that make life feel really good.
Sure, some time to relax, decompress, shut-down after a tiring day is also healthy, within limits. And it's the limit. It begs the question: then what SHOULD we be doing when we're done relaxing and with our day job, which for me is teaching and for the students is learning.
If you've ever done something important, you can feel it. When you work hard to help someone who needs it, there's a feeling -- have you felt it? When you're trying to pay the bills and feed the family, and you're working for that, you feel it. When you're cultivating your garden knowing you're going to eat the fruit of your labors, you feel it. It's affirming. When you're building relationships with your colleagues at work by collaborating on something and heading out to a happy hour on the way home, it feels like you earned it.
Filling up the days with things like that, along with R&R when you need it sets up a healthy mental place to be. The soul-nurturing activities of being part of your world, working to be an important part of it, and taking your own time continuing to do things that honestly cultivate your soul -- it builds up your sense of ownership of your life and connection with the world, you can feel that you belong.
When you don't do those things, but spend your time not doing those things, the opposite is true. The sense of potency and meaning are far away and there's a drifty feeling, unmoored to anything that really matters to you, and that doesn't feel good. It's not bad every once in awhile, but if that's one's main thing, it sets you up to be tossed about by the vicissitudes of life, instead of anchored to the key elements of your purposeful existence.
