When I was growing up in New England, I was part of the rat race before truly knowing what it was. I mean I was 12 years old with a paper route, a part time babysitting gig, pet sitting neighbors' cats, and an occasional run at a lemonade stand.
And this was all before Blackberrys and iPhones and Facebook and all of the other craziness that we have voluntarily engaged in! In looking back, what was the point of multiple jobs at 12 years old? We didn't have the Wii or Netflix or on demand anything. We had the outside, and we had friends in person not via text, Skype or My Space!
How do we shift our focus back to people? Back to what truly motivates us...our families, our children, our dear friends that we are always "too busy" texting, surfing, or status updating to spend time with them. Challenging ourselves to be in person...engaging fully without having our attention turned to words on a screen.
Goals that we have set for ourselves and for our future have to have a foundation...a meaning near and dear to us. Or we lose momentum. The goals become fuzzy and we lose our focus. Another dream or idea dies in the midst of our modern day chaos.
I have learned two hard facts about myself recently...I can't fully disconnect from the electronic world without a small sense of panic. And secondly, even though through Facebook and texting and messenger, I am constantly "connected" to family, friends, co-workers, old high school friends...the person to person connection has drastically dwindled. It's almost like we don't know how to act around each other anymore without a phone or a PDA or laptop.
This is truly just scratching the surface of the social crisis we are in. People have stopped mattering to people. We scan news articles about tragedy while listening to the latest hip hop song on our iPod. We text while in the drop off line while our kids play their video games. We'll ponder over our next Facebook post but not about how we can help those in need. We become more and more de-sensitized to what truly matters the most...the human heart.
In the next several weeks, I am going to challenge myself (and hopefully you!) to disconnect to re-connect. Even if it's an hour at night...or in the morning or whenever. To me, there is nothing worse than our hearts, that are all filled with promise and potential, to be stifled and smothered by a seemingly connected world that has no depth, passion, or true reward.
(for an awesome song reference...google Gary Jules "Mad World"; you tube video to be posted)
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