I miss the effortless flow of conversation between me and my friends of four years. I miss the interest and engagement that was rampant in everything each of us had to say. I miss that human connection each one of us craves endlessly.
I recently finished my first year of college, away from home. As Charles Dickens once put it perfectly, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It was assuredly the hardest year of my life in every aspect.Tears dripped from my face. Bursts of laughter escaped my mouth. Frowns were etched onto my face. Gratitude overwhelmed my heart for this incredible opportunity. Inspiration never left my side. Disappointment flooded my thoughts periodically.
But, I left freshman year with my head held high because ultimately I was proud of all my accomplishments. However, it was officially over and I knew that I would get the chance to recuperate from that emotional roller coaster for three months during the summer.
Initially, the boredom set in. The blandness of my small little town life could not be compared to the busy and exciting college atmosphere I had just grown accustomed to. However, I knew that I needed this time to recover emotionally and I needed the people I grew up with to help in this process.
We all met up and I was so excited but that’s when it hit me. I missed them. Somehow they were sitting right in front of my eyes but I still missed them. Why?
It was the first time my group of high school friends had gotten together after our first year of college and the only thing we could do was focus on the handheld computer we treasured with our life that supposedly kept us ‘connected’. But to whom? I didn’t feel connected to any of the people I had spent the previous last four year of my life with even though we regularly checked up on each other. It almost felt like I was with a group of strangers. It was as if we were meeting again for the first time, as if those high school years had been completely erased from our memory.
Someone finally struck up a conversation and the rest of us slowly started peeling our eyes away from our phones, switching our attention to each other and engaging with our best friends. And it was absolutely wonderful. It was magical.
What does our generation have to do in order to truly connect with each other in person? Do we need to keep our phones in the car to keep it from being a distraction? Do we need a designated basket to place all of our phones in as we walk into a friend’s house? Do we need to stack our phones in the middle of the table so that we remember that there are so many people desperate for a human connection? How we can forget so easily that a new Snap notification, Instagram like, and tweet do not compare to the amazing people we have in front of us at any given moment of our life? Whether we’re waiting in line at Walmart or in a waiting room at the doctor’s office or buying groceries at the local supermarket, we encounter so many people everyday that need love.
So as a generation, let us vow to stop ignoring each other. Let us stop being so engrossed in our digital world that we forget to smile and make eye contact with a stranger we walk past. Imagine how much love we could spread by simply picking up our heads and smiling to three strangers a day.
I am just as guilty of this rude habit that has slowly taken over our society but we can’t live life without each other. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and his smartphone.
