I recently took my son Jack to get his second COVID vaccine. Afterward, as we were sitting in the observation area, I looked at the people around us.
At one point, every single person in that room except me was looking at their cell phone. And it's not like this was a room of relatively young people. The two nurse volunteers sitting up front both had to be well into their 60s, possibly their 70s, and their gazes were trained squarely on iPhones.
I don't say this to claim any sort of moral superiority, by the way. The only reason I wasn't on my phone at that moment was because I recently became aware of how addicted to this device I was, and I've been making a concerted effort to just sit and "be" during quiet moments, rather than checking Facebook or playing my Yahtzee app.
Because, you see, there used to be a time when we as a society were all pretty good at just sitting still and waiting. Before smartphones, you were often in situations when there was absolutely nothing to do for a period of time, for whatever reason, whether it was because you were sitting in a doctor's waiting room or were finished taking a test in school.
Somewhere along the way, though, I lost the ability to just patiently wait. All spare moments were spent on the phone.
Even now when I get a quiet moment, there's a real itch to grab my phone. So very often, I purposely resist the itch and just sit there.
I've found some benefit to this. Our brains tend to go go go all the time these days, and they're not necessarily wired for that. They need time for reflection, contemplation, and inward thought. Collectively, we're starving them of this sort of lower-level activity.
So I'm trying. Really, I'm trying.
The urge is still there to go on Twitter whenever I manage to free up a spare 37 seconds. And while I'm not sure if and when it will go away, I'll admit I'm really enjoying returning to the 1990s for short bursts of time.
You know, back when I possessed some modicum of patience.
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