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A week ago I moved from my parents house into my own apartment for the first time. As the excitement of being able to order Chinese food at 2am and dance around naked waned, the anxiety of being disconnected from the world began to set in.

Financially, I thought it would be a better idea to hold off on hooking my internet up. I can wait, right? No big deal. I build up in my head what a mature, responsible, and wholly adult decision this is. Prepare myself for it mentally. I’ve got enough books and movies to keep me busy.

The first few days weren’t that bad. As time starts to go on, I get into the routine of being pulled over on the information superhighway. I’m playing with my keyboard, putting new strings on my guitar, getting back into my music. I’m thinking about writing some more. Until...

Dear sweet lord my neighbor didn’t password protect their network!!!

The glee I felt in that moment remains unsurpassed by the most excitable child waking on Christmas morning. All my claims of not needing an internet connection go out the window, and are replaced by one great flood of relief.

Why?

The internet is the ultimate distraction from yourself. The limitless supply of mindless entertainment ensures that I never have to think about anything I don’t want to think about ever again. I don’t have to think of or for myself, nor do I have to remember anything, as any trivial fact I need can be Googled in a matter of seconds. Alone in my apartment without a connection means that I am left completely and totally to my own devices. I’m just here.... with me.

That experience scares me off of zazen.

Zazen scares me in and of itself, that’s no secret. But is there anything more purely... me, than being left to sit with my own thoughts? With no distraction, no means of escape, nothing to take the focus off my here and now.

And if the thought of being left with me and my thoughts scares me, is it really zazen I find scary, or myself? Do I scare me? Zazen seems to be merely a tool. It’s a way, not even the way, just a way, to gain a deeper understanding of this thing I call me, and the world I think I’m living in.

Maybe I just don’t want my reality shattered. Maybe I don’t want to have to face the true nature of life and everything around me. In my day to day life, I walk around mostly oblivious. I don’t consciously ponder life, the universe, and everything while I’m going about my day. I tend to dip in and out of it though. While I walk around pretty blissfully ignorant, sometimes those thoughts creep in.

And they fuck me up.

The other night I was walking to my car after work and I paused to look at a stop sign. And I would have sworn on my life that I wasn’t looking at the stop sign. The stop sign was looking at me. And as I looked around I noticed that it wasn’t just the sign. The tree, the lightpost, the other cars, were all watching me.

I don’t mean this all in like a paranoid schizophrenic kind of way.

My point here is what separates me from a stop sign? The stop sign exists because all of it’s cells are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing. In the way that I exist because all of my cells are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

Maybe The Beatles were on to something here.

“I am the Walrus” has a much better ring to it than “I am the Stop Sign”