Early this fall I un­plugged for three weeks. Turned off my phone, took a Face­book sab­bat­i­cal, squashed my com­pul­sion to check email, and bade my friends farewell while I hiked, danced, climbed, am­bled, dined, spec­tated, and con­tem­plated on my own terms across three states and one province.

In the cor­po­rate Amer­ica where I typ­i­cally spend 40-plus hours of my wak­ing life each week, ar­rang­ing such a long respite is con­sid­ered a feat. A sam­pling of re­sponses among the peo­ple I told of my plans: “Who ap­proved that?!” “Wow, I wish I was your age again!” “That’s a once-in-a-life­time op­por­tu­nity. Good for you!”

Per­son­ally, I’m under no delu­sion that a few weeks of North Amer­i­can travel is akin to re­treat­ing to the far-flung ex­oti­cism of Lom­bok or the pu­ri­fy­ing in­ten­sity of an ashram stay in a re­mote cor­ner of India. Hardly.

As some­thing I craved in order to col­lect, re­con­fig­ure and ori­ent my­self in the midst of what has been a tu­mul­tuous year, the three-week break suc­ceeded enor­mously. Par­a­digm-shift­ing? No. Sim­ply con­struc­tive? Yes. That’s all.

But the real story goes back to those re­ac­tions.

That tak­ing a few weeks off to re­con­fig­ure elicited such won­der is it­self a won­drous thing. Is so­ci­ety re­ally so en­slaved to the idea of ca­reer, rou­tine, fam­ily, friends, and money that any at­tempt to dis­tance one­self from that — even for a pal­try three weeks — is now met with sheer awe by other peo­ple?

In their re­ac­tions I sensed an at­ti­tude of: “Well, good for you. I wish I could do that but I need to stay put and focus on my job-fam­ily-mort­gage-school-dog-fa­vorite TV se­ries.”

These days, to un­plug, whether for just a few weeks or in­def­i­nitely, is to put the Amer­i­can Dream on hold. It is a sign of list­less­ness or self-doubt. It is a lux­ury re­served for a few, mostly the young, seek­ing a forum for le­git­imiz­ing their aim­less­ness. It is ei­ther for the yup­pie, the trusta­far­ian, or the trendy ide­al­ist.

How un­for­tu­nate that a hum­ble de­sire to shift one’s stance or adopt a new per­spec­tive through re­ject­ing, or just briefly paus­ing, so­ci­ety’s live-to-work men­tal­ity is seen as un­at­tain­able or viewed skep­ti­cally by oth­ers. It should be in­te­gral to the Amer­i­can Dream (the idea that each of us can har­ness our unique, un­lim­ited po­ten­tial to achieve suc­cess), not an­ti­thet­i­cal to it.

The prac­tice of dis­cern­ment, of re­treat, of carv­ing out the space to build and prac­tice an in­ten­tional life has turned into a for­eign con­cept.

I’m be­la­bor­ing this idea be­cause it’s the as­pect of un­plug­ging that I’m most con­cerned with. At once I am both a work­ing pro­fes­sional, deeply en­gaged in the day-to-day af­fairs of my ca­reer, friends, fam­ily, hob­bies, and the like; and I am also a cul­tur­ally crit­i­cal per­son fight­ing an up­hill bat­tle to cre­ate an in­ten­tional, cre­ative, spec­tac­u­lar life amidst a con­sump­tion-dri­ven so­ci­ety.

I sus­pect you, dear reader, share this mind­set and this chal­lenge. So what to do?

As much as I’d love to up­root and move in­def­i­nitely to a Dan­ish com­mune, set up a pro­duce stand in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, or bounce from vil­lage to vil­lage in Guatemala, that kind of un­plug­ging is not re­al­is­tic for me or most peo­ple. Cap­i­tal­ism’s hold on us is too great. At some point a bill will ar­rive and the ex­pe­ri­ence will fall apart.

Marx’s idea of his­tor­i­cal ma­te­ri­al­ism cor­rectly ac­counts for the econ­omy’s func­tion as the basis for all as­pects of so­ci­ety. Sad but true. We can­not es­cape that. Short of dis­cov­er­ing a suit­case of money or scor­ing an out­size parental sub­sidy, our re­al­ity is at its essence based on the ful­fill­ment our basic eco­nomic needs (such as food and shel­ter). This ma­te­ri­al­ism is the root of our so­cial ex­is­tence, which in turn de­ter­mines our con­scious­ness, says Marx.

Deb­bie Downer would point out, and I would agree, that sooner or later, the com­mune will fall prey to un­paid taxes, the pro­duce stand will be made ir­rel­e­vant by the ar­rival of a nearby gro­cery store, and the sav­ings used to fund that Guatemala vil­lage hop­ping will run dry.

Then what? Game over; back to the rat race — prob­a­bly in a weaker po­si­tion than be­fore you left. Of course, most peo­ple never leave to do some­thing like this in the first place out of, largely, fi­nan­cial fear. At the end of the day, peo­ple in most places of the world are hemmed in and gov­erned by the mar­ket’s in­vis­i­ble, dis­pas­sion­ate, pow­er­ful hand. My pes­simism on this sub­ject pre­vents me from tak­ing that quixotic leap to Guatemala.

But I ac­tu­ally don’t think such dras­tic leaps are nec­es­sary in the first place.

We all pos­sess, right now within our­selves, the con­sti­tu­tion and tools re­quired to achieve con­tent­ment. Leap­ing from one lo­ca­tion or vo­ca­tion to an­other doesn’t change that fact — and may ac­tu­ally ob­scure it, pro­long­ing that end which we seek.

Sim­ple, un­plugged, in­ten­tional liv­ing is at­tain­able through small ges­tures that are com­pat­i­ble with the con­tem­po­rary urban lifestyle. And it should not be seen as an out-of-grasp lux­ury re­served for the new age gra­nola crowd with too much time on its hands.

A week or two of travel. A do-it-your­self phi­los­o­phy. Bi­cy­cling. Tak­ing a new class. Let­ter writ­ing. Shop­ping local. Aim­less walk­ing. A week­end-long email break.

These are all easy, achiev­able ways to de­tach from busi­ness as usual, re­fresh one­self, or sub­vert dom­i­nant par­a­digms. Doing these things should not elicit awe among your per­sonal net­work of peo­ple; rather, they should be seen as com­mon­sense and or­di­nary as brush­ing your teeth. Surely a stag­nant life is as bad as a cav­ity, right? Well, you cer­tainly wouldn’t think so based on how lit­tle at­ten­tion peo­ple de­vote to self-as­sess­ment and carv­ing out the space re­quired for it.

If we are to do the es­sen­tial work of dis­cov­er­ing our own true selves and cre­at­ing a mean­ing­ful ex­is­tence, then we must un­plug. Van­ish. Re­treat. Upend our con­ven­tions.

This should hap­pen in two ways.

First, lit­er­ally un­plug. Tech­nol­ogy’s firm grip on us has un­leashed enor­mous gains in pro­duc­tiv­ity and knowl­edge over the past 20 years, but its ugly side–a crush­ing over­load of in­for­ma­tion–has be­come in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent.

At­tend­ing to the con­stant stream of texts, phone calls, emails, news ar­ti­cles, videos, music, tweets, and sta­tus up­dates that is pushed in front of us each day is a nearly im­pos­si­ble task. Sud­denly, we spend each day in a re­ac­tive mode, sort­ing through what’s been pre­sented to us, rather than in the cre­ative, proac­tive mode nec­es­sary to em­power se­ri­ous dis­cov­ery and in­ven­tion.

Sec­ond, once those in­ces­sant con­tent streams are gone, we can come to un­der­stand and deal with our ma­te­ri­al­ism. By iden­ti­fy­ing and de­con­struct­ing our at­tach­ments — to money, ca­reer, cars, food, sta­tus, power and even friends and fam­ily — we start to un­leash our au­then­tic cre­ative being. This process is ab­solutely es­sen­tial for cul­ti­vat­ing con­tent­ment, self-suf­fi­ciency, and con­fi­dence.

In break­ing through ma­te­ri­al­ism we are up against a pow­er­ful force. “The deep­est crav­ing of human na­ture is the need to be ap­pre­ci­ated,” said William James. Ma­te­ri­al­ism tends to be our go-to at­tempt at nur­tur­ing that crav­ing, and it usu­ally suc­ceeds wildly. We grow ac­cus­tomed to our in­come, house, ego, so­cial life, etc. and find it hard (or, after a while, un­nec­es­sary) to let go or se­ri­ously ques­tion them, for fear of what lies be­yond that tran­scen­dence.

But ques­tion them we must, for, as the urban shaman Gabrielle Roth notes, “… the se­cu­rity of de­pen­dence is ac­tu­ally the in­se­cu­rity of not con­trol­ling your own life, or being your own per­son.” It is my be­lief that through small, oc­ca­sional acts of un­plug­ging we can begin to see the truth in this idea and fi­nally sum­mon the courage to con­front our own ma­te­ri­al­ism to con­trol our own life.

I had three weeks to do this, oth­ers can spend three years, and oth­ers might have 30 min­utes. The du­ra­tion isn’t es­pe­cially im­por­tant; the will to un­plug is. At the very least, sim­ply paus­ing once each day to ques­tion a rou­tine be­hav­ior or think in­ten­tion­ally be­gins to build a self-aware­ness that chips away at ma­te­ri­al­ism, in­creas­ing one’s au­ton­omy and cre­ative power.

This dis­cus­sion can­not end with­out ac­knowl­edg­ing the Amer­i­can tran­scen­den­tal­ism es­poused most fa­mously by Emer­son and Thoreau.

Speak­ing at Har­vard in 1837, Emer­son prod­ded the stu­dents to make a clean break with Eu­ro­pean tra­di­tion and cus­tom in order to forge ahead in defin­ing Amer­ica’s dis­tinct, unique char­ac­ter. In­stead of tak­ing the well-worn path, he urged the stu­dents to take on the cross of self-dis­cov­ery and in­de­pen­dence in spite of the “net­tles and tan­gling vines” that get in the way of self-di­rected peo­ple.

What is the ben­e­fit of doing this, de­spite the strain of in­vok­ing so­ci­etal skep­ti­cism? Be­cause that per­son, he said, “… is to find con­so­la­tion in ex­er­cis­ing the high­est func­tions of human na­ture. He is one, who raises him­self from pri­vate con­sid­er­a­tions, and breathes and lives on pub­lic and il­lus­tri­ous thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart. He is to re­sist the vul­gar pros­per­ity that ret­ro­grades ever to bar­barism, by pre­serv­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing heroic sen­ti­ments, noble bi­ogra­phies, melo­di­ous verse, and the con­clu­sions of his­tory.”

Later, he con­tin­ues, “In your­self is the law of all na­ture… in your­self slum­bers the whole of Rea­son; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.” Ex­plore–begin to call out into your­self, and let the echo se­duce you fur­ther in.

The most fa­mous in­stance of the un­plugged, off-the-grid life is Thoreau’s Walden Pond ex­pe­ri­ence. His ob­ser­va­tions re­veal that our con­tem­po­rary con­cerns ex­isted in his time as well:

“Most men, even in this com­par­a­tively free coun­try, through mere ig­no­rance and mis­take, are so oc­cu­pied with the fac­ti­tious cares and su­per­flu­ously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits can­not be plucked by them. Their fin­gers, from ex­ces­sive toil, are too clumsy and trem­ble too much for that. He has no time to be any­thing but a ma­chine.”

More than one hun­dred and fifty years later, re­sist­ing the ma­chine con­tin­ues to form the basis of our post-mod­ern ex­is­ten­tial con­flict. We can learn much from Thoreau’s ex­pe­ri­ence and apply it today.

How­ever, al­though Thoreau’s ex­pe­ri­ence was cer­tainly trans­for­ma­tive and yielded the in­cred­i­ble in­sights that form a clas­sic book, we have to re­mem­ber that his re­treat was not re­ally that dras­tic an un­der­tak­ing. He lived in his cabin for just two years, the whole time lo­cated only two miles from the near­est town. He had reg­u­lar vis­i­tors.

Let go of your image of hav­ing to quit your job, sell all your be­long­ings and move to a shack in Africa in order to re­al­ize a spir­i­tual reawak­en­ing or break from nor­malcy. If some­one has the time and money to do this, ex­cel­lent. I envy that per­son and sus­pect that great truths will be re­al­ized in such an en­deavor. But for those of us for whom some­thing so grand and se­vere is not a vi­able op­tion, we can have sim­i­larly trans­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ences on a smaller scale.

Seek out, take ad­van­tage of, and pro­tect what­ever lit­tle mo­ments and ex­pe­ri­ences you can to build space in your life for re­flec­tion and thought­ful ac­tion. They are es­sen­tial, not op­tional or un­at­tain­able, for our self de­vel­op­ment.

Doing this is pos­si­ble; it is man­age­able. And it is within reach for us all right now.