I live in a college town and attend a university filled with college students. That said, the device created by Motorola in the 1970s that quickly went global in the early 1990s is ingrained in the culture all around me. It is a handy device that I use daily to keep my life going at a quick non-stop pace at every hour of everyday. I am a part of the cell phone generation.
It is a machine that is used for good and evil. It helps you connect with people, but not those around you. It helps you create moments in the future, but never be fully apart of one. I'm not the first to speak against the excessive use of the mobile phone but this past week I've felt a growing sickness within me by seeing its extremity.
The presence of a phone in everyone's hands at all times is destroying the human ability to interact with people face to face with other people and moment to moment with the world around them. My roommate recently said: "Eye contact is a lost art."
This past weekend I went to a Switchfoot concert and afterward Jon Foreman played a few songs for an after show. Now there are over a hundred videos of him playing songs during after shows on Youtube already, but still we see this. This is the only picture I took (yes, with my phone) out of a disgust for what I was seeing. It looks like a politician and the press, not a musician and a group of fans.
Why are we so addicted to documentation of moments and not living them for ourselves? Why do we just let them slip by without living them out? My favorite is the guy way in the back filming like his video will actually be worth watching later. It hurts me inside because we miss out so much on moments and with people when we really just care about what other people somewhere else may think about what we're doing, where we are, and what they think of us. Like there's a global audience you have to appeal to. Or maybe it's that we desire people to care about what we're putting out there and want them to approve of everything, this deep set desire to be a celebrity of your own life.
Often times I feel like, generally, people are always afraid of missing out, so we check our phones. What's happening next? Something I had to learn a long time ago was this: "No matter where you are, you're missing out on something." And that's a good thing, because people not with you are missing out on whatever you're doing too! But I may add another line: "If you're discontent with where you are, you're missing out altogether."
We are so wrapped up with these ideas that we always need to be on the go! Life is always so busy because we can make it full of all the things all the time! We never take a moment to sit and just be. If we ever are just sitting, it's because we're waiting for the next thing. The bus to stop, class to start, someone to show up. And where are we? On the phone. Instagram, twitter, you name it.
What makes me sick the most is how much of it I see in myself. My phone and I are attached at the hip. I know it better than I know a lot of the people I interact with daily. My constant companion. If I don't feel its weight in my pocket I feel off balance and out of nature. This frightens me. What have I done? Today I walked out on the excuse for a front porch (which is tiny, front porches have been done away with too because no one interacts in a neighborhood anymore) without my phone as the sun was setting and I felt like I was breathing for the first time all day. I need to settle down, quit caring so much about what's going on "out there" and look around at what's right here. There's a beauty to the unseen, a quality in secrecy and unknown of an unadulterated moment of undocumented, un-broadcasted, focused moment of simplicity. No matter where you are you're missing out on something. Be where you are, you wont miss out on what matters.
Here's a video that puts it better than I ever could.
It is a machine that is used for good and evil. It helps you connect with people, but not those around you. It helps you create moments in the future, but never be fully apart of one. I'm not the first to speak against the excessive use of the mobile phone but this past week I've felt a growing sickness within me by seeing its extremity.
The presence of a phone in everyone's hands at all times is destroying the human ability to interact with people face to face with other people and moment to moment with the world around them. My roommate recently said: "Eye contact is a lost art."
Why are we so addicted to documentation of moments and not living them for ourselves? Why do we just let them slip by without living them out? My favorite is the guy way in the back filming like his video will actually be worth watching later. It hurts me inside because we miss out so much on moments and with people when we really just care about what other people somewhere else may think about what we're doing, where we are, and what they think of us. Like there's a global audience you have to appeal to. Or maybe it's that we desire people to care about what we're putting out there and want them to approve of everything, this deep set desire to be a celebrity of your own life.
Often times I feel like, generally, people are always afraid of missing out, so we check our phones. What's happening next? Something I had to learn a long time ago was this: "No matter where you are, you're missing out on something." And that's a good thing, because people not with you are missing out on whatever you're doing too! But I may add another line: "If you're discontent with where you are, you're missing out altogether."
We are so wrapped up with these ideas that we always need to be on the go! Life is always so busy because we can make it full of all the things all the time! We never take a moment to sit and just be. If we ever are just sitting, it's because we're waiting for the next thing. The bus to stop, class to start, someone to show up. And where are we? On the phone. Instagram, twitter, you name it.
What makes me sick the most is how much of it I see in myself. My phone and I are attached at the hip. I know it better than I know a lot of the people I interact with daily. My constant companion. If I don't feel its weight in my pocket I feel off balance and out of nature. This frightens me. What have I done? Today I walked out on the excuse for a front porch (which is tiny, front porches have been done away with too because no one interacts in a neighborhood anymore) without my phone as the sun was setting and I felt like I was breathing for the first time all day. I need to settle down, quit caring so much about what's going on "out there" and look around at what's right here. There's a beauty to the unseen, a quality in secrecy and unknown of an unadulterated moment of undocumented, un-broadcasted, focused moment of simplicity. No matter where you are you're missing out on something. Be where you are, you wont miss out on what matters.
Here's a video that puts it better than I ever could.
Wise words, my friend. Thanks for sharing them!
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