Sunday, May 6, 2012

What I'm Doing Right Now

The thing about Facebook is that people love to post what they are doing "right now."  I am eating a sandwich right now.  I am enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with the folks right now.  I am playing a game with my son right now.

But, are you really doing those things "right now?"  How can you be doing those things and typing them up at the same time?  How engaged are you with your sandwich, your folks, or your kids, if you have to bend your head, look away, pick up your electronic device, and think about what to tell everyone (who really aren't that interested, by the way)?

It used to be the cell phone.  We'd be out at dinner, and I'd see a couple ostensibly on a date, or a parent supposedly "spending time with their kids."  But, they were cradling the cell phone and talking with someone else.  Their partner or image-bearer were left rather bored and lonely.

Before that, it was the video recorder.  I remember those big clunky things and the person who was behind the view-finder was literally out of the action for the day.  They did not "live" that day -- they merely recorded what everyone else did.

To paraphrase Tennyson, "It is better to have lived and not recorded it all, than to have never lived at all."

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