A friend of mine had a baby and then disappeared from Facebook. It was as if something more important (someone actually) had entered her life, leaving Facebook as a casualty on the side of the road. Indeed her little one had captured her heart, time and attention. Keeping up with high school friends on Facebook, not as much.
Another friend stopped using Twitter after being fed up with the vitriol of the 2020 election. When I asked him about it, he simply shrugged and said, “I’m not really that important and would rather put my energy to other things.”
These are just two examples of The Quiet Life. These two friends capture the spirit of a desire for something simpler and less encumbered by the chewing gum that is social media.
St. Paul spoke of this long ago, “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you…” (1 Thessalonians 4:11) He was urging the early Christians to support themselves and live morally upright lives.
The Quiet Life is marked by an attention to the following ideas:
Hard work.
Attention to leisure.
Appreciation for reading, music and art.
Willingness to be eccentric.
Little care for what others think.
Vision for what is a “good life”.
Desire for heaven.
These ideas become very real for those that lean into The Quiet Life. For the two friends I mentioned above, this is evident. Both are successful at what they do. They are persons of substance. They take their faith seriously.
How about you? Are you fed up with the noise of social media? Are you feeling as if you want to live differently in 2021? Perhaps embracing The Quiet Life is one step forward.