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Medieval Monasteries & Digital Wellness
What on earth can we learn from ancient monastic life for our digital wellbeing? Surprisingly, there are a lot of connections.
The late afternoon sun was giving way, lowering, the monks, quietly reading, sensed this shift as they sat in the reading room of the monastery in medieval England. Sure enough the bells tolled. A quite rustle of books closing and robes shifting. Over eight centuries later in a sea of cubicles at a Boston software company, app chimes sounded and the room was filled with the sound of laptop lids closing and the rustle of backpacks opening.
While these activities may be separated by centuries, they are united in purpose. How do we manage our attention in an increasingly complex world? How do we maintain a sense of being and wellness where digital technologies persist everywhere?
What can the practices of medieval monasteries, where many of the same practices are carried on to this day, tell us about wellness in the digital age? Are there lessons we can learn that these ancient practices can help us with today that we’ve lost or ignored?
One could also draw upon Buddhist temples and practices or Hindu Matha’s as well. For simplicity I have chosen ancient Christian monastic practices, not because…
