After seeing a play at the theatre last night, I walked out of there with a fresh understanding of focus. There are so many accessories and technologies today that are a distraction to our lives, we can't even distinguish the difference between something we are learning and something that is interrupting our growth process. The example portrayed in the play was set in a school. Just when the class was getting started and the children were about to learn something new - the bell would ring, there would be pointless meetings and there would be an infinite amount of different coloured forms and papers and letters to be read, handed out, signed, returned, ticked off... And so the meaningless interruptions continue. The children would leave uninspired, bored, thinking that was the way it was meant to be. We incorporate these distractions into our lives so easily that we don't even realise we are not getting anything valid out of the process. This reminded me of another distraction I see all too often and I cannot describe how much it gnaws at my tolerance.
The infamous Blackberry. I am probably the only one of all my friends (including their friends' friends and acquaintances and colleagues and neighbours and their offspring) that does not own one of these fascinating objects that seem to control, interrupt and consume the population like a disease. And let me remind you - a disease is an ugly, negative thing and I chose that particular word with good reason! It seems to me that the entire world has decided that if you are not in contact with everyone twenty four hours of the day, you MAY miss something HUGE. I mean let's imagine a meteor hit the earth. If everyone was running around in hysterics and you didn't know why, at least you'd be able to BBM your friends and ask them why there is chaos. right?
If you're having coffee with a friend, or even worse - dinner with a a date - it is SICK to see the amount of people who will IGNORE the person sitting right in front of them (yes, the person who actually made the effort to be there in the flesh) and start instant messaging someone else. How is that not rude? I have a friend who CANNOT detach this object from the palm of her hand. Physically cannot put it down; would rather eat awkwardly with one hand than take the risk of missing a message from a boy on there. Heaven forbid he said hello and she couldn't respond in time, before he would have to say hello to another girl. Ah - that must be how you find true love. Who can reply the fastest. Who is available twenty four seven at your disposal. If only I'd known that five years ago.
I guess I don't understand the need to feel connected to everyone I know during every second of my life. I like to forget my phone sometimes. I like to enjoy my moments without a buzz interrupting me, only to discover that once again, it was not an emergency after all. And just like the children at school, I don't want to just start learning something or doing something in the real world, only to be interrupted by the virtual one.
I know plenty of people who have fallen prey to this 'phenomenon'. I'm just wondering where all the other souls are. Where are the people like me who think it's not normal to stare at a phone for hours rather than looking around at the things this world has to offer. You can't see the opportunities and lessons, beauty and excitement, if your eyes are on a screen when you walk passed the flowers.
Don't get me wrong, I love all my friends who threw away their souls when the went to buy their blackberries! It doesn't make them bad people or any less important to me.
I just hope they walk into a manhole while they are BBM-ing.
Love you all.
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