For the last decade I’ve been captured by screens, mostly the phone but TV too. While in the car the phone has filled me in on the latest political outrage but left me blinded to the young eagle flying across the front of the car, or the joyous clouds rolling across a clear blue sky. There are rough drafts of novels sitting in notebooks that might have found readers by now. A few extra minutes? I pick up my phone and pack someone else’s thoughts in my brain instead of my own.
Like people sitting together at restaurants heads down, engrossed in their phones, I’ve sat with my quiet husband, texting on Messenger with someone who wants my help. Now.
“Internet friends are not friends,” says a wise friend. She’s right. Online relationships are disembodied and ghostlike. I’ve lost time on people who move on when their drama passes, while Mrs. Horse waits in the barnyard.
Without the benefit of a person’s physical presence, we miss out on how it can heal or energize or even discourage us. Maybe instead of building online friendships, we need to put down our screens and meet in person. Maybe instead of reading our phones during breakfast, lunch and dinner we need to taste and savor our food. Maybe if a post stings us to outrage, it’s not worth disturbing our peace. Maybe instead of filling every last minute with something our phone says, we need to be bored. Maybe I should apply all these maybes to myself.
I’m Katie Andraski and that’s my perspective.
