Your Attention Please

According to the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, “The most valuable gift we can give someone is our attention.”  We all want to be acknowledged.  We long for that connection and yet in today’s world it’s a challenge to give anything our attention for more than 10 seconds. Technology has essentially wiped-out silence.  We’ve entered an era where noise has become portable as well as pervasive.  But we’re not victims.  We use noise to drown out quiet.

It takes more time and effort to find silence, than it once required to have music. Music is everywhere. It’s become like traffic noise or like the wallpaper in our living room.   We no longer notice it. What we do notice, though, is silence. For it has become so rare now that quietude becomes the gift that music once was. 

Tic-Toc has become white noise.  Most of us have our noses buried in our phones listening to podcast, social media posts, YouTube videos and more.  The sound of voices in the background seems to bring some pseudo sense that we aren’t alone.

Open Ai and Anthropic have replaced self reflection and personal growth  We can’t think without searching Google or asking Chat-Gpt for advice.  It’s wonderful that we have all these facts so readily available, but our brains hardly exercise anymore to access information. And the information we do receive is often filtered, slanted, and sometimes fabricated.  It has become more difficult to carve out mediation and self examination.

Because information is only a click away the demands at work are much greater.  We’re expected to do more in less time.  We fill every spare moment muti-tasking or is it multi-escaping?  There’s no such thing as down time anymore.  The lack of stillness has given way to more illness and dis-ease. More stress and less balance and equanimity.

The toll this has taken on our bodies effects us on the deepest most profound levels.   Wellness stems from conscious contact with the authentic or whole self. Where we used to have a moment of stillness waiting in the check out line at the market, the bank, the post office we’re now on our phones, checking email, social media or texting.  It’s a great convenience but when do we turn it off?  When do we get still?

We’re stressed-out.  What do we do about that stress?  Drink more coffee and eat more refined sugar.  There’s a Starbucks on every corner just so we can catch up.  “Gotta keep up with the Jones’s”.  We grab fast food to save time but feel tired and listless afterwards and wonder why heart disease and obesity are two of the most common diseases in America. 

75% of all illness is stress related.  It seems like there’s a 3 or 4 letter word for every disorder that deals with stress today.  We don’t even have time to call the disorder by its full name.   My kid has OCD.   Teachers claim that all their students suffer from ADHD and let’s not forget PTSD for those who have experienced one or many exposures to trauma.  Women I haven’t forget the most quotidian excuse for our bitchiness, PMS.  Where’s the TLC people?

Seriously, it’s not just our health we are compromising; we’ve lost intimacy in the face of increased cyber-contact.  We’re lucky to have a face-to-face chat these days without interruption.  A text trumps the conversation in front of us.  We’re constantly distracted.  It is now simpler to multi-task with a virtual friend, than visit a real friend who might demand that we be attentive.

We can’t even get a live person on the phone anymore.  Agentic AI has replaced humans when seeking a service or support.  We search for help and instead are met with an automated recording of choices and buttons to push.  By the time the 10th choice is announced we forgot what the first 3 were and now must hit the button that repeats the choices all over again.  Or we make the wrong choice and can’t figure out how to get back to the start menu so we must hang up and start all over again.  It’s like a headless octopus and it can feel impossible to get any real help.  If you’re like my 97-year-old mother who refuses to learn technology, you get left behind and feel helpless and frustrated.

Our generation is in danger of losing the depth and quality of relationships, all in the name of instant communication, efficiency, productivity and instant gratification while the rest of the world texts, pokes and relates in thirty-second intervals.    Instead of unique facial expressions, mannerisms and tones of voice, everyone is restricted to the same smiley, black and white text or and the attempt to communicate in cold silent words when 90% of communication is nonverbal.

So, we live as robots, marching to the incessant background noise of the technological age and what disappears from our lives is connection and tranquility. Technology is discarding our privacy and our concentration, but it is also eliminating our ability to be silent and hear our inner guiding light.

I was told by a friend her teenage daughter had sent 3,000 text messages last month. That's 100 a day, or about one every 10 waking minutes, morning, noon, and night, class time, lunch time, homework time, and tooth-brushing time. If you do the math, she's never alone for more than 10 minutes.  Which means, she's never alone. 

While appreciating the good things our advanced communication systems bring, we must remain aware of the pitfalls.  Instant communication breeds impatience while encouraging relationships to remain shallow. The constant noise and distraction at our fingers has replaced the desire to self-reflect. 

Technology, like most things, is a double-edged sword.  We don’t have to renounce it.  Perhaps we can live in harmony with it. Creating more of a balance by making stillness a part of our daily life.  For the most powerful gift we can give ourselves is attention to the still voice inside that can only speak to us in silence.