Distraction

I was driving down the road with my family and got behind a silver car with the license plate “BO55”. The license plate gave me a little chuckle, but it quickly disappeared as our little silver boss began drifting into the lane next to him. It was so bad I thought he was just getting over without a blinker. The car to his right moved out of his way and then the silver boss car seemed to come back to reality and returned to the center of the lane.

When we passed by the car, I took a quick look to see who was driving, as one does when they see someone driving erratically. It was a young man who was not just looking at his phone, but invested in it. I remember the sly movement to change a song or the quick glances to make sure I was still going the right direction. This was neither of those. He was blatantly using his phone on the road.

How often do we use phones on the road? I don’t mean actually roadways where it is often against the law, but the road of life. How many times do we get caught on another video only to look up and realize we’ve traveled miles without really paying attention to where we were going?

This isn’t meant to be some sort of call to repent of phone use, but a reality check of how much time we lose because life wants us to stay busy. Every thirty minutes my phone fills up with useless notifications for games and spam emails and I go through them because I’m waiting for that one important one. Inevitably I move onto watching short videos because I don’t have time to really invest myself into something more productive.

Technology is a great tool. It helped us bring to life stories we could only imagine, it makes writing a task that can be completed from the comfort of bed with the lights off, it gives us connection to people we may have never met to collaborate on new ideas. Yet it tugs away at us. Information is so easily accessed it’s hard not to over eat. It’s almost like we’ve each received our own fast food device. Why go cook a meal when it’s always a finger press away?

Because you can sing and dance while making a meal. You can make your own creativity and not just consume others. Phones are great but I feel getting back to our own creativity is important. When I was a kid I had to make up the stories, no one was going to do it for me and if they were it was a movie I wouldn’t see for years. Take time to be creative. Take time to sit in silence and feel the beauty of the earth. Take time to be undistracted.