About six weeks ago I gave up reading news accounts on the internet. Since we don’t watch television or read newspapers, my meager attempt to minimize contact with information means I’m quite cut off from whatever is happening outside this house. Especially during this week’s hiatus from work, the effect of my self-induced cocoon is pretty clear: the less I am aware of the outside world, the more sensitive I am to what used to be typical encounters with it.

The recent isolation has shown me how much our personality is really integrated with common thinking in the world, because now that I’m removed from it, I don’t understand the state of what little I have observed; to me the world just seems insane. But that is totally my fault — I choose to be cut off. I’m sure if I made more of an attempt to empathize with strangers to reflect on their anxieties, maybe I would understand them better. But why should I?

In the past when I mistook information for knowledge, I wasn’t so sure of my thought’s value, but life is much better since reality dilutes me less. Now I don’t gossip and I don’t like small talk, I don’t seek references unless they are useful — I’m not even really interested in what’s going on out there, anyway. All I know is that I’m happier being less, and life today couldn’t be better, so maybe this experiment will become a lifestyle.