Larger memories, smaller hearts
I once overheard a mother asking her daughter what kind of storage device she wanted (of course, the choice of color came last) for her PC, and she said, “The bigger the better!”
The mother asked, “Why, what will you store inside?”
“Oh, lots of songs, videos, and of course my class projects.” She gave her mom the good-daughter-pleading-eyes effect hoping to convince her that she will also “study hard” (come on, with all that music and videos?) in school.
“But it’s a little more expensive than the others,” the mother observed.
“Yes, but it’s what all my friends have,” the girl said. Bigger storage size has now become a status symbol.
“So what color do you like?”
“Hmm, I think I’ll choose, uh… PINK!” the girl replied, as though she had to exert neurons to elicit such a predictable choice.
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We recall something similar in a parable of our Lord about a man who had a bountiful harvest and was worried about where to store his wheat. The solution, it dawned upon him, was to build bigger barns. Once built, he felt all he had to do was to eat, drink and be merry.
The problem with this man, as it is with us today, is not because there are bigger storage spaces—whether physical or digital—for us to dump our treasured belongings. Neither is it because he is rich or has many possessions. The problem lies in his unsatisfied tendency of having more things. This problem stems from the heart of man. And it is a sickness called avarice or a disordered attachment to material things that shackles the heart and makes it small.
The heart was created by God with natural longing for what is good. St. Augustine already observed the heart’s “restlessness.” He, however, confesses that it can’t find any rest unless it is possesses the ultimate Good: God Himself. “Nothing can fill up the infinite capacity in the human soul except what can physically enter into it and take possession of it—and this privilege belongs to the Creator alone, and to that participation of His Life, which is given in grace and in glory.” (E. Leen, “Progress through Mental Prayer”)
As long as the heart has not found this good or safe port—or doesn’t want to find it—then it will continue to aimlessly sail the uncharted waters of the Seven Seas of Vices seeking only to satisfy its hunger for pleasure, fame, success, taste, and comfort, etc.
Things are a bit more complicated today because one can possess so much even with “smaller barns.” Technology has made it possible to digitally store almost an infinite amount of our treasured belongings. This adds a burdensome insecurity to the heart when it has to make sure that its “digital treasures” are not only properly stored but also secured.
Data security is an additional layer of complication, which develops due to the nature of digital things: they are easier to acquire and process (i.e., there’s no hurry to develop our photos, just upload or save them) but they are also easier to lose or be stolen (e.g., when the date is accidentally erased). That is why some make backups of backups and so on.
The accumulation of material things has a limit because of our physical nature. This prevents us from indulging in all things at the same time in them. Moreover, material literally occupies space and we must manage to have only what is necessary. Digital possessions, however, do not require warehouses to store them.
One can have an infinite clutter of pictures, music, movies, etc., in a portable drive. Like material things, it would be impossible to indulge in all of them all at once. But what the heart now treasures in this case is that it has them all at the same time, in one device, whenever and wherever he may be. One feels “digitally secure.”
The digitally insecure heart deforms the person to be a cold, irritable, impatient, critical and blinded by the ensuing vices, which may one may also store in his digital world (i.e., pornography, violent films, irreverent music, and other humanly degrading materials). The heart ends up betraying the person enslaved by such possessions, and in the end is shipwrecked in a sea of vices and possessions.
This “digital attachment” succeeds in filling the gaps that material things could not literally occupy within the heart. The heart becomes small because it has to some extent become “material.” It has lost its capacity for the true goods that will help the person to form himself according to God’s love and will. No matter how much it possesses materially or digitally, these created things continue to remain outside of man. Only the love of God can truly fill man’s heart, transform and make it capable of authentic love and self-giving.
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“What does it profit a man to gain the world if he loses his soul?” (Mathew 14:1-12)
