A year without Internet (and so much more): Review of What Falls From the Sky by Esther Emery

I find it no coincidence at all that I finished this book the day before our family gives up television for Lent. It is not the same thing as giving up the Internet for a whole year, which is what Esther Emery writes about in What Falls From the Sky: How I Disconnected from the Internet and Reconnected with the God Who Made the Clouds. But what I read about her experience without Internet has plenty of immediate application.

All I knew about the author when I picked up this book was that she lives off-grid in a yurt in Idaho. Of course she would go a year without the Internet, I thought. No problem. But the yurt in Idaho is where her story takes place now. The story she tells in her book takes place years earlier, when her fast-paced life in theater collides with personal crisis and a cross-country move. When she and her husband live in Boston and she realizes she doesn’t want a cell phone anymore, it turns into something more than giving up her cell phone. She decides to give up the Internet entirely. (Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book through the Booklook Bloggers program. Opinion reflected in review is my own.)

I was struck by a few of her observations, including one she learns from a study that people are wired to have no more than 150 friends. Her thoughts turned immediately to the Facebook friends she left behind when she abandoned the Internet, and it was my first thought as well. She wrestles with wanting to write about her Year Without Internet and post it on the Internet so people know what she is up to (she calls it the Unblog) and it leads to probably some of my favorite observations and questions:

So emerged my position statement, the philosophical heart of the Year Without Internet. I do not believe that advanced communications technology is required to have a full and vibrant connection to the world. I do not believe that I have to be digitally connected in order to be happy. I believe I could do just as well, or maybe better, with something real.

This was my position, but if I were to now want to prove the position right. I would have to get out of my house. I would have to greet people in person, get to know my neighbors, have fascinating experiences, and invite people over for dinner. But I don’t feel like doing any of those things. Without the Unblog, I don’t feel motivated to do any of those things … because no one is watching.

I wonder if this was true in times before our time. Was it impossible to imagine putting effort into something if there were no eyes to look at it? Was this true that a life seemed meaningless if it was lived in a place where it could not be seen? (p. 44-45)

I think about how much time I spend on social media telling other people about what I’ve been doing, and I wonder how much of it is really necessary.

Toward the end of her journey, as she is learning to play guitar, she realizes that doing a new thing terribly is its own kind of skill.

I have found the one thing that I can always be good at. I can always be brilliant at this. I can always, no matter what, under any circumstances, be an absolute beginner.

I have to sit with these words because I do not like not knowing how to do a thing. How would I be different if I approached life with the gusto of being a brilliant beginner?

The book contains themes including faith awakening, forgiveness, family trials, social anxiety and neighborliness, but it’s not clinical or prescriptive. It’s a peek at one woman’s experience and how the world opens up for her, and it carries with it the hope that the world can open for us, too.

You don’t have to give up anything to get something out of this book, but by the time you’re finished reading it, you might find you need some things a little less.