Lines that cross !

This was written last year but rings more true today than then and will be truer next year.


Our attention spans are now like flashes in the pan.
Is 24 hour news the reason we crave new crisis every day or week and why we need a new stimulus all the time.
Like checking our Instagram accounts or e mail accounts or texts every few minutes.
Do we really need the stimulus so badly and the gratification to be so instantaneous. As time goes on I am weening myself from these constant stimuli and feeding of the ego.
Do we need to feel constantly in touch and or is it better to focus on those around us and learn of their lives.
"Be here now" I think is a Demming principal which rings truer than ever as we are now so seldom
"here now."
When having dinner or in line at Starbucks or at a meeting or just playing a round of golf.
Put the electronic stimulus down and feel the human contact it is far more gratifying and fulfilling than a text or tweet that really means nothing. Yes, check your devise for work or when kids need something and I mean really need something.  Technology is all well and good, as there are many good things that come from it and the world is indeed changing.
I understand, but you cannot meet a new person if you never say hi to them.
You cannot really learn about them and there lives if you never look up an engage them.
Remember to balance our lives with real people and the fascination of talking to them and feeling their issues and being concerned with their lives. Yes, use the tools of communication but do not make them your only source of interaction as it dehumanizes and can cast a cold fog over everything that is human and true. We are changing and technology is changing us and that is all well and good, The  human interaction is the supreme stimulus and feelings for one another come from that actual interaction not from someone sending data to a phone.
So balance your technological lives and I will try to do the same, for if I meet and I mean truly meet one new person a day then I am better for it.
Ask others about how their lives are going and what they know and what they do. So much more interesting than an update on what you had for breakfast or a picture of the latest place you went that someone else didn't.
Don't get me wrong I like Instagram and love seeing pictures of all my friends kids and grand kids that is wonderful. It just shouldn't be the total focal point of my day , it should be a few times a day .
That is my goal so here I go into a world of 80% real interaction and 20% digital fun.
Easier for me being retired , but I am not talking about work time that is different the technology is necessary for that.
Good luck and as my wife says 'put down the phone and talk to someone."