In our world, we have countless ways to communicate. You can text your best friend, call your mom, Instant Message that new kid in class, or Skype with your boss. If you need to contact someone, you can do it in seconds. Everything you need is right at your fingertips.
In some ways, this can be a blessing. We can accomplish more in our time than we could before and share ideas faster than ever. Our connection to one another is no longer limited to face-to-face, one-on-one interaction. We should be closer to our friends and family than we would be in any other day.
But that’s the issue, we aren’t.
Real human connection means listening, telling, learning. When we put effort into one another and discover the personality behind the emoji and the face behind the filter, we become closer.
There’s something truly intimate about sitting in a restaurant with someone else and looking them in the eyes. There you will notice how the other person laughs when you’ve called the waiter over at least ten times to add ice to your coke. The actual laugh. Not a typed, “haha” or “LOL.”
You can get to know how they move, how they think and act. You can feel it when they start to feel sad, or when they feel giddy about something. It’s a golden connection we cannot lose in order to find another person’s hopes, fears, memories, and humor.
If we have our heads down and our eyes locked on those little screens for most of the time, we will miss some of the most beautiful elements of interconnection and relation.
We can’t lose touch. The fight for companionship is here.
Of course, all the little screens can be useful. They aren’t bad. It’s the way we use them that gets in the way of important things. If we use them to further our association with one another and learn about other people, then we have used them well.
If they are applied to practical things like work and school, we are doing good. Even if we use them just to have fun, as long as we do not forget the way to connection.
In this overly communicative nation, we have to learn how to actually communicate. Once we look past the keys at our fingers, we can reach each other in ways that technology cannot.
So, lean in and listen.