When I was a child, one of my mother’s hard and fast rules was,’ no books at the dinner table’. As my brothers and I were all voracious readers, that was a hard rule to follow and we would often be found trying to sneak a peek at the book hidden on our lap under the table.
While I occasionally still enjoy the guilty pleasure of reading a book while I dine alone, my other guilty pleasure now and that of millions of other Americans is reading my smartphone while eating.
Come on, now. Admit it! You have found yourself glancing at your phone once or twice while dining out, haven’t you?
We were in IKEA the other day and glancing around I noticed that except for one couple, everyone else was on the phone. Not talking, but reading, or perhaps playing on-line games. Everyone! Not that IKEA is the most stimulating of surroundings, but what about the company they were keeping. Were they not more interesting than the iPhone? I can excuse the one woman who was dining alone, but not the rest who were so caught up in their device that they were missing the moment.
For that is what the majority of the human species is doing at the present time, missing the moment. We are so caught up in our electronics, we are forgetting how to live.That was not true for my brothers and me. We were absorbed in books, but we always had time for face-to-face interaction with a host of friends and neighbors. There were bikes to be ridden, woods to be explored, treehouses to be built, games such as Red Rover or softball, to be played, and then books for those times when we were forced to spend time at home.
Also, unlike today, when we have unlimited access to the internet, there was something finite about our interaction with books. We would go to the library on Saturday morning. Each of us would check out the allotted maximum number of books. I seem to recall that you could check out six books at a time and they had to be returned in a week. Returning them in a week was not a problem for any of the three of us. Once we got home, if nothing interesting was going on in the neighborhood, we would plop down with a book and as soon as one was finished pick up another. Sometimes, I would finish all six books before the weekend was over, but I was allowed to go to the library only once a week, so I was done with reading anything but school books for the week if I finished them all. Most of the time, however, I would dole the books out so that they would last for the entire week. We did not have a television, so books were our sole means of entertainment when we were not playing with the neighborhood kids.
Technology has erased all of the freedoms that we once experienced. We think we’re free, but we’re really chained to our devices. I just read something today that confirmed something I have suspected for some time. Game developers are intentionally making games so that it is difficult to quit once you start playing. My guess is that the developers of news sites and social media are doing the same thing, It is in their best interest to keep us engaged. It is not in ours! I think it is time we dropped the charade that the internet and all of its functions are improving our lot, making our lives better. Granted, there are apps which might add to our lives, but what were we doing without them before. Take the weather apps for instance. It used to be we would know it was going to rain by the approaching dark clouds and we dressed accordingly. Now, we think we have to know what the weather is going to be a week in advance. It might be useful if any of the weather prognosticators were any good at what they do, but more times than not their predictions are incorrect. I’ve noticed that most of the blizzards they have predicted in the last few years have not materialized, but let them forecast a dusting and we will be digging our cars out from a foot of snow.
We are currently on vacation in Italy. I watched the forecast for weeks trying to decide what the weather was going to be like and what type of clothes I should pack. A week before we left it was going to be in the high 90’s. That changed to in the low 80’s with rain.