Shaelyn Diabo
Contributor
Growing up in a digital world has stunted the growth of those who have more potential than brainwashed and idle robots who sit behind a screen and pretend.
We pretend to be okay with the violence and the unrest of the world, reacting with blank faces and reposting.
Praising others in the forms of ‘likes’, justifying validation through social media and how we perceive those around us.
But why isn’t it fine to want to express ourselves? What else do we have to lose when our lifelines die faster than our phone batteries as we waste away in our seas of lit-faced screens.
Will 3000 likes soothe the pain? Will that comment from your crush really change how you view yourself? What can help when you’re suffering in an endless loneliness, stranded alone in the ocean of your own thoughts. What can help when you finally feel as if you’re drowning and there’s no lifeline, lifeboat or charging cable to cling onto?
Nothing. You drown and the ocean's vast emptiness enters your lungs, the salty water fills your mouth and you can’t breathe. But why does this need to happen?
Perhaps it was all the time you spent on your phone like your parents said, maybe it was the heartbreak when your crush stops commenting, or maybe it's the severity of the reality of our real world.
But this does not have to be the end. We can save ourselves without expending these lifelines, and reconnect with ourselves.
The ocean’s violent waves die down with the tide as the moon pulls it back from the beach, our minds set at ease.
We take a breath of the salty beach air, our lungs empty of the ocean water and we stay alive.
The moon never leaves and the ocean stays constant, but the ocean cannot lower its tide without the moon. The moon cannot exist without the sun.
Find the sun within yourself and the ocean becomes a peaceful presence which coexists.