I want to break up with big tech. But it is just so convenient.
Two nights ago, I downloaded Vivaldi. It’s a web browser that is faster, more secure, and most importantly, not run by Google.
The thing is, I didn’t open it. I was too afraid.
Last night, I buckled down and started it up. Fresh tech. Clean. Beautiful. I felt revived.
Until it asked if I wanted to import from Chrome. My heart sunk.
My Chrome browser has become bloated. Full of bookmarks I’m sure may be important and extensions I have all used many times. Yes, I’ve used only a handful in the last month. Only a few more in the last year. But still, they are hard to delete.
I stood firm. No. I’m not importing it all. This is a fresh install.
And then, when I went to open the calendar, empty of any of my current life, it hit me again.
This is going to be hard.
And yet it is totally inescapable.
Adopting new tech gives us the perfect example of the essential and necessary pain of life.
- When we refuse to change, we accept the pain of living with our mess.
- If we import our mess, we are facing the pain of cleaning it all up.
- And when we start over, we make ourselves face the pain of building everything from scratch.
Avoidance is the mind’s trick that makes us think pain is avoidable. It isn’t. Doing nothing is often just the maintaining a familiar pain over a novel one.
In all decisions, pain is inevitable and unavoidable. But not all pain is actually bad. I wanted a new browser because I wanted to lose that familiar pain.
The Good Pain
The real point is to see the true benefits of facing the pain of making things simple. Because then, at least, I’m moving forward. I’m more free.
As for this time, I’m choosing the third option. Fresh install. Typing in passwords again. Taking the long road. And with the right mindset, actually kind of fun. A new project.
But I’ll confess that at this very moment I am sort of cheating. I’m writing this post in Chrome. Because I’m in a hurry. And the log in is seamless.
The next one will be on the new browser. A new start. I’m making that promise to myself.
Then I can start to face the real challenge: deleting the old browser.