20/20

Tunneling Out of Tunnel Vision

For the last several months I've been having trouble with my eyes. Not my vision itself exactly, I don't think I need glasses or anything, it’s more of an increased sensitivity to light. It feels as though almost every source of light has been cranked up to a near-blinding level. I'll be getting my eyes checked soon, but the issue caused my mind to wander to a classic episode of The Twilight Zone called Time Enough at Last. 

Henry Bemis

The story follows a man named Henry Bemis, a bank teller who is obsessed with reading and only wishes to spend his time with books.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bemis, he is beset on all sides by the endless demands of daily life. His work, home life and social engagements constantly pull him from the literary dreamworld he prefers to inhabit, making him miserable. 

Henry’s desire to be left alone to read leads him to seek solitude in the vault of the bank he works in, so that he can catch up on his novels during the day. Henry’s habit of hiding in the vault unintentionally saves his life when war breaks out and the country is leveled by bombing raids. Henry Bemis emerges from the ruins of the bank to find everyone dead and the city destroyed. His wife, his friends, the bank, the town, all gone in an instant.

Henry initially contemplates ending things, as most probably would in such a situation. However, before he can carry out the act, he notices that the public library is largely intact. This discovery of books immediately turns the horrific fate of his wife, neighbors, and all of society into a regrettable afterthought.

Hooray!

Henry joyfully gathers a stack of books which he will now finally have time to read. He sits down on the library steps and begins to read, but as he looks down at the pages, his glasses fall off and break. Heartbroken, Henry laments: 

“That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was, was all the time I needed...”

Tragic?

We are for some reason meant to feel bad for Mr. Bemis, but I don’t really see it that way. While there is nothing wrong with reading and enjoying books, like anything else it can become a problem when it begins affecting your actual life. Let's consider the character for a moment. This is a man who prefers books over his fellow human beings. He neglects his wife, shirks his duties at work and resents having to visit with his friends. He would rather retreat to his literary world. We might be able to understand the impulse to retreat into ourselves at times, but Henry indulges in that impulse and lives it daily. The story treats this behavior as a sort of endearing quirk, but in reality this would not be a person you'd want to be around.

Modern Parallels

Imagine that this story was set in the present. Would we feel any sympathy for someone that behaved this way with their phone? 

Would their marriage be healthy? 

Their job performed well?

Would they even have a social life? 

If the whole world were destroyed and this person reacted with elation because now they’d finally be left alone to scroll, would we view that person with anything other than disgust?

What Changed?

The story of Henry Bemis is indeed tragic, but the tragedy isn’t that Henry was robbed of his ability to finally read his beloved books. The tragedy was that this man had become so disconnected from his world that he viewed the complete destruction of that world as a welcome opportunity to pursue the thing he truly valued.

Henry Bemis on the day his wife died.

By breaking his glasses, Henry is now doomed to exist not only in solitude, but without even the comfort and distraction of his books. 

Sadly, because of the way he chose to live, Henry Bemis’s life will remain essentially the same as it was before. He still has no connection to anyone, no sense of purpose, no grounding in the world of the the living. Despite all of the destruction, Henry’s life hasn’t truly changed at all, only his surroundings.

Henry’s curse is not that he is unable to read his books. The true curse will be that only now, when nothing can be done to change it, will he be forced to look reality in the eye. Forced to recognize and truly feel his disconnection from humanity. He will have nothing to distract him from his own emptiness.

Holding up the Mirror

It may be helpful to try to view our own lives through a similar lens. Imagine a scenario where all the things we use to numb or distract ourselves from reality were suddenly unavailable to us. Phones, screens, TV, internet, all gone. What would our lives look like absent the carnival of mindless distraction we face daily? Two questions come to mind.

Firstly, how would we react, honestly, to the disappearance of these crutches we so often lean on? I’d like to imagine myself being relieved, and maybe eventually I would be, but initially it would probably be a very upsetting experience. And that fact is disconcerting on its own. Being truthful with myself, I'm sure the full magnitude of my avoidance of things would quickly be made very clear. I would probably be similar to a drug addict finally being honest with themselves and realizing that if they "could stop anytime they wanted" they would have done so a long time ago.

Secondly, what would we begin to realize had been neglected in our lives because of our preoccupation with those distractions? Who had we not kept in touch with? What had we not learned about? How much time was available for us to spend meaningfully with loved ones that we instead wasted with distraction? What could our lives have been? What kind of people might we have become?

There is no way to know for sure the answer to those questions. One thing that I do know for sure is that (for myself at least) the answer to either question is damning towards behavior most of us take part in daily.

Time Enough

Although the questions I’ve just posed are hypothetical, our answers to them can help us paint an accurate picture of our reality. The screens and other distractions don't have to disappear for us to understand how we'd react if they did. If we know that we wouldn't react well to their absence, it tells us something important about the effect they’re having on us. 

Understanding that we allot time and energy to what we value is important. The addictive nature of screens and other media can be subtle. These things siphon our attention away from the real and the meaningful. This is by design and the entities encroaching on our attention do not have our interests in mind. Understanding this threat and remaining aware enough of it to retain our humanity and connection to each other and to reality is the only way to fight back.

There is absolutely time enough for all the things we truly value. We just need to ignore the distractions long enough for those things to snap into focus.