Who Is Calling Please?

“Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.” ― Rollo May

Think about the last time you sat down with family or friends at a dinner.

Maybe you were in a coffee shop or out on the back porch enjoying the spring air with others. If you looked around, how many others including yourself had a cell phone in hand. Occasionally glancing at email, Facebook or even Twitter.

How surprising that technology has become a necessity in everything.

I am probably just as bad as the next person when it comes to this modern day occurrence. If I go back to my days growing up, I remember the phone being attached to the wall in our house. It was in the kitchen and the handset had a three-foot cord.

An interesting fact is that before mobile phones, no one asked where you were when calling. This is because phones were tied to a physical location and if someone were calling you, that is where you had to be.

When people sat down to eat dinner, if the phone rang there were some who rushed to answer it. In some households you did not get up and answer the phone. Dinner was a time for family, or friends and conversation.

Dinner time was not completely pure as televisions were usually blaring the nightly news in the background. Yet for all the good things technology brings to the table (pun intended), we also allow a bit more to be taken away from us.

What if we declared meals together cell phone free?
What if we turned off our tablets while on vacation?
What if we talked more instead of updating our status?

On a vacation my wife and I had taken, work weighed heavy on my mind. I constantly checked my emails and allowed the stress to eat into personal time with my wife. Two days into our vacation, a thunderstorm damaged a nearby cell phone tower. Cell service was gone and it forced me to set the phone down and stop thinking about work.

It made me concentrate on us and that was a very fulfilling experience.

Find time to walk away from the every day, to walk away from the technology that ties you down. I am not saying these technological wonders are a bad thing. Great tools have made our lives much easier, but there is a time to walk away from them and just be you.

Enjoy some time off and we'll call or text you later. With location services turned on, we'll know where you are any way!

Stay inspired my friends.