It seems blindness has put me in a place of distinct advantage over sighted people in a surprising fashion. What was once a big frustration for me may actually be an advantage. Because I can't read the text that appears on my cell phone, see the latest image on the computer screen, laugh at what's scrolling across my friend's PDA, or perceive what's flashing on screens around me, I am protected from the distractions that could keep me from being fully present where I am.
Even though my eyes aren't drawn to these distractions, I can still clearly detect their powerful lure in those whose company I keep. For example, I'll be hanging out with a friend and I'll realize she is disengaged in our conversation or seems preoccupied. Then I'll realize she is actually very engaged, much occupied...with the technology in her hand! She is texting, twittering or reading someone else's text or Twitter!
This phenomenon confuses and concerns me. We seem to be a culture of distraction and we join in under the auspices of being connected. But I fear what it really does is erode our actual attentiveness to reality and fool us into settling for less than real, vulnerable, present relationships. It actually disconnects us from each other, our collective history, and true reality.
A friend told me about her teenage daughter's fifteenth birthday slumber party. As she walked downstairs to check on the girls, she found all seven of them lounging on the couches and sprawled on the floor while they wildly pressed buttons on their cell phones. As mom examined more closely, she saw they were all texting. They were not texting boys from school or a parent though, but texting each other! Rather than talking to the girl who was lying on the same couch, sprawled on the same floor, breathing the same air she was, they were close together in isolated bubbles using technology to communicate through symbols and satellites. Mom confiscated the phones and returned them as each girl left the party, hopefully encouraging real, present relating. What a perfect picture of what I mean.
How did we get to this place in our culture and our way of thinking where we are now substituting digital communication for human interaction that involves voice, eyes and gestures? Techno-connecting can certainly complement our connection with others, but it cannot be a substitute for it.
We must challenge ourselves to determine which values allow us to be such multi-tasking members of the human race who displace being present where we are, for being present in a million other places with a million other people at any given time. Does it make us feel important? Do we value productivity that comes from multi-tasking more than the opportunity to focus on one person or one task at a time? Does it really make us feel connected? Does it make us feel less vulnerable to the perils of relating one-on-one in real time?
Being fully engaged, attentive to our present reality, is integral to having wisdom and experiencing intimacy. A lack of attention to people or to our present reality can leave us isolated, superficial, clueless and distracted.
Maggie Jackson, a columnist with the Boston Globe, said in her book Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, "The way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention--the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress. The seduction of alternative virtual universes, the addictive allure of multi-tasking people and things, our near religious allegiance to a constant state of motion--these are markers of a land of distraction in which our old conceptions of space, time and place have been shattered. This is why we are less and less able to see, hear and comprehend what is relevant and permanent. Why so many of us feel that we can barely keep our heads above water, and our days are marked by perpetual loose ends."
Our cultural and personal enemies are not the Blackberry, the iPod or the Internet. Our real potential enemy is the hand that holds the cell phone, the ear that hosts the blue tooth, and the eye that focuses on the computer screen. But those same hands, eyes and ears should be our allies. For those are what God designed from the beginning of time to be tools of connection to each other and the world around us. We must constrain them to be tools of attentiveness, not weapons of distractions used against our culture and us.
Our English word attention actually finds its roots in a Latin word that means stretch toward. In other words, it takes effort, focus and restraint to attend to what is right in front of us--to be present where we are. Distraction, conversely, draws us away from our present, pulls us from our focus and deceives us into thinking we can be fully present in a multiplicity of places with a multitude of people all the time. Thomas a' Kempis once wrote, "A man is hindered and distracted in proportion as he draws outward things to himself."
Attentiveness draws us to connect to others, to knowledge and to the world around us. Therefore, we must value attention as a precious and endangered resource. There are always going to be pings, flashes, rings, buzzes, beeping and vibrating electronics around us. I don't want them to steal our precious resource of attentiveness. They can divide and distract if we let them. The convenience they provide must be harnessed as a tool to draw us together in a real and organic way, not draw us away to a distraction that defeats us.
Well, that's what's been percolating in me lately!
