Ipods and Isolation
If we are to improve, find our kindness, discontinue the tolerance of bad and dishonorable behavior, we are going to have to take out the earphones. We are going to have to turn off our ipod. We are fascinating, there collected in our huddles in our London fogs that our fathers wore with white wires dangling from our head. We are on shuffle as we shuffle through and often unaware or disinterested in the one beside us. They too, are often locked into their own personal jukebox.
We are losing our hearing and losing touch for one another during our moments when the possibility of hello and how are you presents. The experience, critical and deeply human of ‘striking up a conversation,’ with a complete stranger, one unknown is more and more uncommon. Many of us remain locked in our little, solid world with all the drapings of ‘ do not disturb.’
We are, in many ways a ‘ Do Not Disturb’ culture. Possibly this results from the overly litigious nature of our society. Possibly it results from the total consumption of our lives to the pace of being all to all. Possibly it results from the fear that is daily driven into our consciousness from the tele and the papers.
The Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell of American exchange.
Please, do ask. Please, do tell. For this, by this I will, we will be outside of ourselves and our personal electronic devices that have served to isolate us and shut the door of approach from another.
For one day, let all of us put down our cell phones, black berries, ipods, iphones, laptops. Let us look up away from the screen or keypad and meet people, eye to eye, a smile and a hello; a how are you.
That, I say, would be the ultimate in ‘ CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW.’
