In the entertaining rush of life, don’t lose sight of the basics

Scott Swanson

It may simply be a result of age, but it seems to me that life is speeding up.

I’m constantly bombarded by fast-breaking information – streaking my way from all directions.

I can access any website in the world just about everywhere – even on distant slopes while elk hunting, as I discovered this fall while wondering what our party’s next move should be as snow flurries descended upon us. Presto! I discovered I had enough bars on my phone on one particular outcropping to get to weather.com, which provided all the answers.

Well, most of them.

If people aren’t calling us with tips on news stories, I can always try to search the Internet or social media for clues to what’s going on right this very second. There’s a plethora of options: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine …

I say “try to” in reference to the latter because speed often includes inaccuracies and social media are loaded with them.

If I’ve really got time to burn, there are YouTube and Vimeo.

Yeah, YouTube, where I can wile away the hours watching incredibly innovative, engaging, titillating, amusing, shocking videos that millions of other people have already watched – and, if I’m really on top of things, maybe a few that nobody else has seen yet that I can forward to all my contacts using all my communication media options.

So how do I have time to work? How do I find time to spend time with the wife and kids, take care of the livestock, clean my office, check out that annoying squeal on my truck, read books, watch TV, go fishing, go to church, etc. etc.?

Like I said, life’s complicated.

I purposefully do not participate in most of those social media I mentioned, mostly because I actually need to focus on my job of keeping track of things right here in Sweet Home. I still have time for other things, but the point is that it’s getting harder for all of us.

People devote significant intelligence and creativity to publicizing rather pedestrian accomplishments (“Just lettin’ everybody know I made and consumed this gargantuan stack of utterly stupendous pancakes! Couldn’t help myself, ya’ know. They’re just soooooo good!”)

They’ll post videos of their incredibly amazing pet kitty chasing a newly discovered, unbelievably beautiful butterfly in their fabulously well-appointed yard, or snoring on the back porch – for all the world to share.

I will say one thing for the social media revolution: It’s certainly juiced up the use of superlatives in our language. And I’m not saying it isn’t entertaining. But it is time-consuming.

Recently, as I watched someone fiddle with their phone, I thought to myself (an increasingly rare occurrence, since I find I have less free time to devote to thinking independently), “I wonder how all this cell phone stuff impacts us during holidays?” How much do we really pay attention to each other any more – in person, that is?

What if folks devoted all that time and energy, intelligence and creativity to developing relationships, to thinking about something that might be more important than reviewing the latest home video hit?

By the way, when I checked a few days ago, the No. 1 YouTube video of all time (“Gangnan Style”) was up to nearly 2½ billion views), still well ahead of the much more recently posted “Charlie Bit My Finger Again,” (No. 26 and the top non-music video at 832,599,740 views late last week – unless you count LittleBabyBum’s “Wheels On The Bus – Plus Lots More Nursery Rhymes,” with 1,069,500,828 views – in a little more than a year.

I’m afraid I’m woefully out of touch. The thought of using YouTube to entertain my infant did not occur to me.

But I digress. Back to my point, which was … oh yeah – holidays, relationships, serious thoughts.

We’re at the other end of the spectrum from the pace of life people had before the Industrial Age, back when they traveled at 3 mph and plowed their fields behind livestock or chopped down trees with axes or handsaws. I imagine that there was more time then for contemplation, for the kind of thinking that develops one’s brain in ways that are probably more healthy than flipping through thousands of Pinterest photos.

The question I’m angling toward here is this: How does this instantaneousness in life – communication, entertainment and sensory overload (at least for me) affect our family time, our interactions during those special moments when we do actually get together with family and friends?

(“Auntie Ethel! Soooo nice to see you! And you’re walking again! That’s grea – hold on, let me check my Instagram! I just got something… Whoops, just gotta respond real quick here!”)

I’m not the only one asking that question, of course, but it occurs to me as I watch the people around me and catch myself interrupting what used to be sacred family time to check my text messages or answer a call or respond to a prompt.

There’s a bunch of research out there that is beginning to identify the effects all this fun stuff is having on us: on appetite, on self-esteem, on the ability to think independently, on ability to converse “normally” with others, on ability to multi-task, on levels of stress – all of those negative, by the way. I could go on, but I’m not telling you things you probably don’t already know, one way or the other.

At this time of the year, I think it’s worthwhile to recall that there are deeper, important things that can easily get lost in the shuffle of information overload.

How much do we even think about what’s behind these holidays?

In our fast-paced world, fostering really meaningful personal relationships beyond the disengaged, casual, fluffy stuff we do on-line is really challenging.

The Christmas holiday, in our culture, still offers a chance to interact in person. It’s an opportunity to engage with serious thoughts, like why people started celebrating Jesus’ birth in the first place. In fact, why was Christ even important?

Maybe we should put the cellphone to sleep for a few minutes and think about that. Possibly even crack open a Bible.

It might do us good.

Enjoy a very blessed Christmas!

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