STAY IN IT

My husband wanted to race cars in Las Vegas for his birthday. It’s not really my deal and I planned to get some admin work done on the trip. As I was packing my bag, he questioned me, “Are you bringing that?” The ‘that’ he was referring to was my laptop. “Why, yes!” Yes, I was and (by the way) I couldn’t do without it. “Well, it would be nice if you weren’t distracted and on it all the time so we could have fun for two days.” Of course, I was wanting to push back and stubbornly put my laptop in my bag while he was watching to prove just HOW important it was to me. But wisely, (and maturely I now commend myself), I did not. I also refrained from any sarcastic remarks pertaining to how disciplined he was not to take his device. (Notably, this took me years of practice).

So, as I sit here at the race track - with pen and paper in hand, I think about how the pull of devices and social media has so predominantly crept into our ‘modern’ lives. Consequently, many of us can feel like they in fact, script our lives.

I was impacted by the poignant scene at the end of the movie “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”. Walter discovers wildlife photographer Sean in the Himalayas where Sean has been waiting to capture a snow leopard on camera for months in the high altitude. To Walter’s amazement they both witness the appearance of the snow leopard, watching in silent reverence until the rarely sighted animal slinks away. When Walter asks Sean why he didn’t capture the leopard on camera, his friend answers, “If I like a moment… me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera, I just like to stay in it.”

I was working in Chico, CA, and during a lunch break I decided to go and lay in the grassy gardens of the University. Beautiful weather and huge, shaded oak trees filtering dappled sunlight through branches made for a picture-perfect scene. There was a group of students sitting in a circle together under a tree and a few people walking through in twos and threes. It didn’t feel out of the ordinary. The students appeared to be praying quietly together. But, looking closer, reality dawned on me. Heads were bowed, yes, but to their phones. Every one of them. And now looking at the people walking, I realized they were walking ‘with’ friends but each person was looking down to their phone. There was not one person who was NOT on their phone! I wondered if I was the only one witnessing this gorgeous afternoon in real time. I felt like I was in an alternate reality. Right at this moment, a man pushing a woman in a wheelchair rolled down the path. She was on her phone AS WAS the man steering her.

In that moment, it seemed comical, ludicrous even, like a new kind of spiritual practice that tunes us out from this world, but doesn’t quite peaceably settle us into another. On social media, we enter others’ worldly dimensions, but simultaneously, we are prohibited from fully enjoying personal ‘in the moment’ connection with others. I wonder… are we training ourselves OUT of staying in present moments? With the distraction of our phones and devices, moments are escaping before our very eyes. Our present moments are lived or relived through a veneer of glass.

When my children were young, I really fought to be ‘present’ for them and yet, in the same breath I felt the need and mental pull for time out. There were times when I felt my days rolled into one and I was not quite able to grasp the script laid out for me purely because of their immediate needs. This was all before the pull of technology was so predominant in our lives. Now, finding myself in an entirely different season of parenting with children growing, tweening and teening, I wonder if I can resist a different pull – my screen.

Being mentally present now is not so much for my children as its main noble purpose, but for myself! Can my inner world be unclouded by the hazy pull of social media where one day rolls into the next via time zones, others’ pasts, my present? Can I show up for myself - me, personally, undistracted, feel out the present moment and if I like it, STAY IN IT?

STAY IN IT.