Text and the Modern Invalid

Not so many years ago, if you were laid up the way I am, your options were pretty limited when it came to boredom killing. There was daytime TV, filled with soap operas, game shows, and "happy" talk shows. Or if you were the intellectual type you could raid the local library and catch up on all those classic novels you'd been meaning to read since high school. 

Ah, but the joys of technology have made recuperation into an all you eat buffet of entertainment options. Currently I have at my disposal my computer, my tablet computer, my smartphone, my cable enabled television, my internet enabled television, my blue-ray player, and my mini-DVD player. I can stream movie upon movie from Netflix, listen to radio stations from around the world via Tune In, get any book I fancy with a touch of the Amazon button, listen to any recording ever made on Spotify. The boredom killing business has never had so many options.

In addition I can reach out to as many friends and family as are computer connected to me. Facebook, texts, phone calls, this blog, they all add up to being alone without ever being alone. But here's the question -- is that a good thing? Is it natural? Doesn't the healing process involve some amount of alone time, just you and your body getting back in touch with one another? When Mr. Cat is sick he skulks off to the far corners of the house and has no wish to have contact with anyone else. "Going off to lick your wounds" is a long standing practice in both animal and human culture. 

On the other hand there is the school of thought that the power of group healing is a real thing, that having a group of friends sending you psychic energy, praying for you, or even just thinking about you, helps the recuperation process. And if so, then technology is just helping to facilitate that power to reach out. I am a believer that the power of the human mind is unlimited, but on an evolutionary scale we have only begun to tap into that power. If the adrenal gland can make it so mom can lift the car off her trapped beneath child, is it so far off to believe that a group of people can make one person feel better just by sending good thoughts his way?

So I'll take all the good thoughts you care to send. And in the meantime, I'm off to binge watch HOUSE OF CARDS.