Looking Up
I have been scrolling through my phone A LOT lately. I use an app to track nursing sessions, which has been great for helping my son to develop a good feeding and sleeping schedule. Like most things in life, the added bonus of having the app on my phone to help us get into a good routine comes with a negative—I am constantly looking at my phone screen. Early in the morning…midday…late at night…
I recently caught myself staring at my phone screen and scrolling through social media while my son was laying on my lap smiling at me. He sneezed, I looked down at his smiling face, and suddenly felt like the worst mother on the planet. Here I have this adorable, perfect little human who thinks of me as his whole world staring at me and ready to play. And what am I doing? I am looking away from him, staring into the void of social media.
This was quite the wake up call for me. Since that moment, I have been making a concerted effort to put my phone down and look up. Up into the faces of my friends and loved ones. Up to see the light changing outside my window. Up to watch the wind blowing the leaves from the trees.
When news broke recently that Diane Keaton had passed away, I saw a lot of people reflecting on the way her movies made them feel (generally warm, fuzzy, and understood). This led to people reflecting on the nostalgia we feel when watching movies from the 90s and the ways life has changed since then. I read that my generation (millenials) are the bridge from that past to our present. We are the youngest ones in society who can still remember life before the digital age explosion, but we also grew up with technology. I’m thankful that I’m on the older end of that bridge. I was already in my mid-twenties before I started using Instagram, and I’m grateful for that.
Life before everyone had a smartphone moved more slowly. Look back before everyone had a cell phone, and that is even more true. Cell phones, and especially smart phones, have improved our lives in some ways. We can easily reach people when we need to, and we have a world of information at our fingertips. But in many ways we have conditioned ourselves to connect with others through some digital form. We text and send emails rather than hand writing letters. We call to chat rather than sitting together over a glass of wine or a coffee. The uptick in nostalgia over the 90s that I saw made me wonder why that is. Life is busy, yes. But surely life always was.
So, I’m committing this week to putting my phone away whenever possible. Not just down next to me where I can easily grab it and open up all my apps. Away. In the other room. If there is a true emergency, the people who need to reach me will reach me. The world is changing all around me—from the leaves on the trees to politics to the age of my kids. It’s time I looked up and soaked in every beautiful moment of it while I can. Life is a gift, and it is up to us to use it for good.
What will you rediscover when you look up yourself?
