draft lenten veil

Digital detox concept — ‘Fasting for the eyes’ Close your eyes and open your heart/mind

The eye is the most important sensory organ; we use it every day. We begin each day by opening our eyes and end it by closing them. And throughout each day, we are flooded with a visual, often AI-generated deluge of information that we filter consciously and unconsciously.

The eye has played and continues to play an important role in many cultures, such as the Eye of Horus in ancient Egypt, which stood for strength, protection and health, or Odin’s sacrificed eye in Norse mythology, which helped him attain boundless wisdom. In Christianity, ‘The Eye of Providence’ is of central importance — when open, it symbolises the ever-revealing truth, calls for wisdom and appeals to the conscience.
During Lent (Quadragesima), the altar is covered with a Lenten veil for 40 days, and our vision takes a ‘holiday’.
If we make ourselves rare on social media during this time and close our eyes to the outside world but open them to the inside, we can look at ourselves and our conscience with a different perspective. For what is it that social media does to us? It deliberately shows us images and opinions that are intended to trigger and polarise our emotions, causing stress and addictive behaviour and generating a desire for likes and thumbs up.

During these 40 days of “digital detox”, we can focus on both the essentials of everyday life and new things. During this period of purification, the eye of providence can question and reflect on our own moral authority in our communication.

Digital detox — Close your eyes and open your heart/mind, shut down your social interaction for 40 days and find yourself!