Reality can be cold. I don't mean that metaphorically, although it's true that way too. I mean the actual, physical experience of stepping outside on a winter morning, feeling the sharp air against your face, and knowing that the day ahead will require something of you. Effort, attention, and engagement. The willingness to be present in a world that doesn't always feel comfortable.
No wonder we reach for warmth wherever we can find it.
For many of us, that warmth comes in the form of a screen. A phone, tablet, or a television playing in the background. These devices offer something reality often doesn't in a cozy, predictable, controllable environment where we can consume without being demanded of. Where we can watch without being watched. Where we can exist without the weight of actually existing. I call it the warm blanket of pretend.
We wrap ourselves in other people's lives through sitcoms scripted for laughs, “reality” shows that have nothing to do with the reality of real life, endless feeds of curated moments from strangers we'll never meet. We scroll through highlight reels and manufactured drama, absorbing hours of content that will change absolutely nothing about how we live tomorrow.
And then there's the news. The endless, breathless, urgent news. Stories about events happening somewhere else, to someone else, presented as if our awareness of them constitutes meaningful engagement. We watch, we react, and we form opinions. Just to move on, having done nothing except fill our minds with information we cannot act upon. When did we start believing that consuming information was the same as living a life?
I've asked myself this question more times than I'd like to admit. Because I find myself at times curled up in the warm blanket of pretend, telling myself I am staying informed or unwinding or just taking a break. Meanwhile, the actual life laid out in front of me sits waiting. The conversation I needed to have. The project I needed to finish. The person in the next room who might have welcomed my presence.
The allure is powerful. Someone else's perceived life can feel like such a strong draw that we forget we have a life of our own to live. Their drama is more exciting than our ordinary Tuesday. Their adventures are more compelling than our familiar surroundings. Their manufactured problems have neat resolutions in thirty minutes, while ours drag on for months or years with no soundtrack to guide us through. So we retreat. Not dramatically it happens a little at a time. A few more minutes of scrolling. Another episode before bed. One more refresh of the feed. Each small choice feels insignificant. But they accumulate.
They call it dopamine hits. The little neurological rewards that keep us reaching for the phone, clicking the next link, watching just one more video. And maybe that's true. Maybe there's brain chemistry involved. But I wonder if dopamine is sometimes just an excuse for justification. Justification is easy, and it's easier to explain why I need this escape than to examine why I'm escaping in the first place. It's easier to retreat into the warm blanket of pretend than to fully engage with the sometimes cold reality of my actual life.
Cold because real relationships require vulnerability. Cold because meaningful work requires effort. Cold because being present means being available and availability is costly. The blanket feels safer. But safety isn't the same as living.
I don't write this as someone who has figured it out. I write as someone who keeps catching himself reaching for the blanket when the air gets sharp. Someone who has to ask, again and again, whether the comfort is worth the cost. Because there is a cost. There's always a cost. Here's the question I'm wrestling with: Is the information I'm pumping into my mind worth crowding out the world I live in day-to-day? Most days, the honest answer unsettles me. And maybe that's exactly where the real work begins.
This is the second article in the series "Leading a Distracted Life" exploring distraction, authenticity, and the real work of discipleship.
