808 words
It had been over two months since I was able to put together enough minutes of free time to last more than an hour. Before we entered the silly season of the year’s final quarter, whenever I had such an opportunity, I would go for a walk with a camera. This past weekend, I finally had this chance, and I took it.
Totalling ten kilometres, I planned for a pitstop at a new café at the turnaround point where a small meal and coffee seemed like the ideal break. Upon arriving, the staff immediately pegged me for a new potential long-time customer and went out of their way to make me feel welcome.
This café also had a more expansive restaurant section, and as I opened my notebook to write an upcoming article, I noticed something disturbing. Amongst almost every single one of the patrons, their eyes were glued to their phones, even as they ate. The only exception to this was a young mother who was lovingly staring at her one-year-old in his stroller as he napped.
In the article I published yesterday on this site about the psychology of hobbies, I mentioned the effect of modern biases. I realized yesterday that I was guilty of this as well. My immediate reaction to seeing this was to blame mobile phones. With hindsight, I now blame us.
I occasionally looked up from my notebook as I managed to write three-quarters of the article. Whenever one of the patrons was interrupted by those whom they were sitting with, they looked up with the same annoyed facial expression. The only person who was greeted in a pleasant manner was a member of the waiting staff. The majority of the people at this venue were couples belonging to the upper-middle class, and they all hated being reminded of who they were there with.
It is easy to blame our phones, but we are the problem. A good friend told me recently that his father always had a newspaper or magazine covering his face. Another reminded me of how our parents would insist on their children being quiet while they either people-watched or daydreamed. They used the public setting as a tool for their children to behave and be quiet.
Being present and enjoying our environment always played a secondary role to the act of simply doing something different in another place that is not our living room. I do not blame our mobile phones and their infinite source of distractions; I blame our constant preoccupation and desire to escape from them. The sad reality is that most patrons were sitting with a source of their preoccupations and were looking to escape them.
I am a little more sensitive to this topic for a good reason. I have become a little more aware of how fleeting life is and that the time we have to ourselves, especially in the company of those whom we love, is incredibly precious. While sitting next to many people who I adore while they were sick, over the years, I always made it a point not to have a screen in front of me while they were awake. Even if we were not talking, I would look at them and maintain eye and physical contact. I thought of all of the years and opportunities that went by where we all had dissociated from each other by using a screen, and it continually, to this day, breaks my heart.
My response to this has not been to get rid of my mobile phone or to put it out of reach so I would not instinctively grab it whenever my brain had a moment to itself. My course of action was to get rid of the people whose time I valued less than catching up on social media or the news while on my phone.
Life, the time we have with those we love and adore, and especially the time we have with ourselves, is incredibly precious. As a species we have always looked for ways to distract ourselves from unpleasant matters which are preoccupying us. My article about the psychology of hobbies went into the positive aspects of doing this, but the manner in which we are doing so, as outlined in this piece, is simply destructive and a waste of time. What I have learned in the last four years is that slipping into this dissociative behaviour at every opportunity is robbing us of the most valuable moments in our lives.
Be present with yourself and those you choose to spend your free time with. The old adage of everyone on their deathbeds regretting not spending more time at work while kicking themselves for not spending more time with loved ones can be applied here. Most people I have been observing in public have not been present with their loved ones. I fear that on our deathbeds, we will not be able to attribute the time we lost with our loved ones, for we were simply distracting ourselves the entire time.
– Time of writing: 01/14/25