I am starting a movement. It will be a very important and very pleasurable movement. I call it “Incommunicado.”

Many of you are familiar with the word. You may recognize its root word as “communication” but may be confused by the “in” prefix, because in this case “in” means out.

Incommunicado means “out of communication”, not connected to any communications technology, reachable only by human contact.

I was born in 1950 and have spent a great deal of my life incommunicado as a natural way of being.  Most people over 30 years old were the same way. We didn’t grow up with cell phones and the Internet. We would leave the house on a summer morning, hop on our bikes, say goodbye to mom and be gone the whole day, and not get back home until dinner. This was the normal and healthy way then. We wouldn’t be in contact with anyone other than the people that were with us. There were no cell phones, no texting, no internet, nothing to download, no iPods, no headphones or keypads. If our moms needed us, they would send a little brother on a bike to go get you. They may call someone’s mom to see if you were there. Our childhoods were very incommunicado and we thrived.

We spent much of our adulthood the same way. We could be incommunicado in the car, on a camping trip, fishing, hunting, walking; it was a natural and unquestioned state.

The older people reading about incommunicado think about this state wistfully and remember this as some of their best times.

Too many others will read about incommunicado and it will make them uncomfortable.

If you are in the first group, you can be the teachers and spreaders of this movement.

If you are in the second group, you can be the beneficiaries of it.

This is not an anti-technology rant. I am not looking to stop or prevent anything. I merely seek to point out that we are in the midst of a communications revolution of tremendous scope and we will do better if we learn to control our technology rather then have our technology control us.

The simplest example of this would be ignoring a phone call when you are in the midst of something else more important.

The highest example would be to see being incommunicado as some of your best moments in life.

 You may dearly love the ride at the amusement park, but sometimes you want to stop and get off. You love your friends and acquaintances but that doesn’t mean you have to be at their beck and call all the time. You may love your jobs but that doesn’t mean that it is not good to get some removal from them at times. News can bring us valuable information, but that doesn’t mean we have to pay attention to it all the time.

I was inspired to do this while being incommunicado. This is why I am recommending it to you. IF YOU REALLY WANT TO LIVE LIFE AT ITS BEST, IF YOU WANT TO BE INSPIRED, IF YOU WANT TO KNOW APPRECIATION AND  SATISFACTION, IF YOU WANT PEACE, YOU WILL BENEFIT FROM BEING TOTALLY DISCONNECTED FROM THE MATERIAL WORLD ON A REGULAR BASIS.

A wise man said very long ago, that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Too many people rush through life with constant noise and distraction. Too many people have too much trouble simply relaxing. Too many people have ill-defined goals. Too many people have no dreams at all. Too many people have dreams but no hope. 

I am not suggesting that you run off to some guru or mountaintop or plunge into some huge metaphysical study. I am merely suggesting that you learn to be in control of your technology.  Learn to use it and learn to control it.

In upcoming blogs we will discuss the many and pleasurable ways of doing this.