Solitude as a cure for Instant Gratification

Instant gratification is no doubt a symptom of our modern digital lives. We are constantly bombarded with information from our technology and from all around us. But is there a way to reverse the effects that instant gratification has on our lives? Thankfully there is a way to unlearn this behavior. As Robert Colvile, the author of The Great Acceleration, tells us "What we need most is not to slow things down, but to develop the right strategies to cope."

In Sara Maitland's book How To Be Alone she examines the ways in which our culture has a stigma around being alone and the effects this has on our lives. A large part of the ways we prevent ourselves from being alone is by surrounding ourselves with technology that constantly stimulates us with messages and alerts. In allowing ourselves to be away from our technology we can move away from the instant gratification. In the book Maitland discusses a study from 2008 that showed that 53% or mobile phone users had nomophobia, or a fear of being unable to use their phone. This included having a dead batter, losing the phone, and not having network coverage. She also points out that phobias are often learned or inherited. This fear is certainly learned through our behaviors surrounding our technology and also through the culture surrounding these technologies.

Maitland still uses email and phone, but there are specific times in which she allows herself to use them. She does not necessarily say you should remove all technology from your life as it has many social benefits that are good for people's health. Instead she proposes that people should allow themselves to be away from technology for the majority of their day. She relates this to the Christian paradigm of going into the desert to find oneself. She says "the authentic inner self, or true soul, is obscured and weakened by too much worldliness and corrupting materialism. The person desiring perfection must flee into the desert and nurture the inner life in solitude." 

By letting ourselves be away from technology for long enough we also let ourselves revert closer to our true selves. This helps us remove ourselves from the instant gratification that constant stimulation causes.