Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Out of Touch

We have completely lost touch with reality. I have been aware of this for quite some time but realized the magnitude firsthand as I recently sat with friends attempting to watch a movie. I had already seen the movie, loved it so much that I wanted to make new memories watching it again with friends that I thought would appreciate it. I should have just watched it by myself. The memories probably would have been better. I don’t blame them. I’m not sulky about it. I wouldn’t even call what they did inconsiderate. They, like myself, have just lost touch with reality.

The reality is that in December of last year Shellie Ross, a mother of a two year old, lost her son in a drowning accident. The reality is that this little boy died in a pool all alone, cold, and struggling. He will never have the opportunity to enjoy life. He will not grow up and fall in love. He will not grow up and fall out of love. The reality is on that day a baby died. His mother’s reality…twitter. One minute prior to her older son calling the authorities to report that his brother, her son, was drowning Ms. Ross was tweeting “Fog is rolling in thick scared the birds back in the coop.” Reality is while her son was drowning she was tweeting. Approximately thirty minutes later as the boy was dying she was tweeting about the incident. She was asking for her followers prayers nonetheless but still she was tweeting about it. Five hours later she was once again putting all her followers on notice that her son had died. I sat in amazement as I read this story. What mother tweets about her son’s death? I am not a mother but I imagine if I were to lose a child it would bring such immense earth shattering pain that I would be curled up in a ball, not on twitter.

The reality is that my friends, glued to their cell phones texting during an entire movie, and Shellie Ross are just representations of a generational trend. We have lost touch of reality by ironically staying in touch with our tech gadgets. I have no room to point fingers. During the day I cradle my blackberry in my hands like a newborn baby. At night I prop it up on my pillow like a lover. When I awake its right there, literally the last thing I touch at night and the first thing I touch in the morning. In some ways I am sure my blackberry relationship displays being out of touch with reality. However, I am not just talking about slight astigmatism here. I am talking about full blown loss of visibility, loss of touch.

I don’t have a twitter account, took myself off of facebook about a year ago. I don’t have anything against those sites. I did not like my specific facebook relationship and what kind of person it was creating and therefore eliminated the problem. There are people who don’t lose grip of reality while using these social networking sites and to those people hats off. I just don’t think I will be taking my hat off to the vast majority. I don’t take my hat off to those whose every thought, and I do mean every thought, that enters their mind must be tweeted. We are living in such a fantasy land that we think our every move is groundbreaking news. I don’t take my hat off to facebookers who spend endless hours consumed with what someone else is doing, staring at someone else’s’ pictures. No hats off to those of us going out because a new profile picture is needed. And although we may be having a miserable time, out with people we really don’t like, whenever a camera flashes we are suddenly happy and alive. The reality is that we are creating moments for the purpose of artificial websites. For the vast majority I will keep my hat securely on my head.

What happened to solitude? No more is there sitting at the house and reflecting on our day because if we even try we are distracted by tweets going off, facebook messages popping up, gchats popping up, gmails, emails, text messages chiming, BBM, and then the obsolete telephone calls that we occasionally get. It’s just so exhausting. And while all of this is occurring we are missing something. We are missing a sunset or special moment with a loved one. We are losing grip on the important things. We are so consumed with all of these extraneous devices that we don’t know what is going on right before us. We are out of touch with reality.

Do you ever feel like being so connected is really leaving you disconnected to reality?

4 comments:

  1. The movie night...that was the night I missed! I definitely agree with you though...

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  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO_37ZFKUmM

    check it out :)

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  3. woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow *sigh* loves it :)

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  4. I agree with this one. I dont tweet(?) or do any site other than facebook. And if you ever saw my facebook you would see how (un)seriously I take it. I write crazy statuses for entertainment purposes only. Some people get mad because they take it seriously. But crackberry cursed me too. In february when I first got mine I went on a date, the whole time I was checking e-mail, texting, on my bbm. It was so bad I never saw that girl again. So I made a rule. I purposely lost it for a few hours everyday. Broke the curse and I'm no longer addicted. I think.

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