The bathroom door in my childhood home had a Native American
lady carrying her son bundled on her back.
It was right there on the back of the door. If I had been raised Catholic I’m sure it
would have been the Virgin Mary. Some
days it almost became a dragon’s face.
This is when I say “back in my day…” You see, back in my day, when you needed to
spend a few minutes in the bathroom you didn’t have a tiny computer to take
with you. So you sat there quietly and
pondered life just as God intended. If
you were going to be a while, my dad had a collection of Reader’s Digest
magazines and maybe a word find or two. But
for a kid with an imagination, the wood grain on the back of the door provided
plenty of amusement.
There was a lot of wood grain in the house. The cabinets, the table, the hardwood floors
all brimmed with fine wood grain. Yet
none of that grain became a mother and child.
The wood grain on the bathroom door was able to morph into imagery only
because I was still.
We’ve lost the ability to be still in modern life. Obviously the smart phone is to blame for
eternally occupying our brains and our eyes.
Saying this helps shift the blame away from us. Yet in the back of our minds, just behind the
news feed we’re scrolling through, we know that the phone is just a tool. The tool is not to blame because the tool is
not in charge. The truth is, we’ve lost
the desire to be still.
All you need for proof is to go to the bathroom. Before your cheeks feel the cool of the seat
you’ve got your phone in your hand.
While you do whatever you went there to do, your thumb is scrolling
nonstop. Email, Facebook, Instagram and
if it’s really serious you may even have time for Twitter. Even if you just checked it.
Ever go to the bathroom and reach for your pocket and feel
the horrible dread of it being phone-less?
What an eternity. Time stretches
on and seconds drag on like months. You
sit there, completely helpless, wondering what you’re missing in the world of
digital communication. Did someone else
like your photo? What if someone is
texting you? What if you’re not the
first one to leave a clever comment under someone’s post?
A few feet in front of you there’s a skull emerging out of a
camel’s body. There’s a moose with an
oversized and asymmetrical set of antlers.
There’s a monster truck with what looks like a poodle driving it. But you’ll never see it because you don’t
want to see it. Because you don’t create
the opportunity to see it.
Or you may be less visual than me. Maybe you’re a thinker of thoughts. Maybe you have a novel in you. Maybe you’re hearing the notes of your next
song. Except you can’t because you wont create
the opportunity to be still.
I’m not sure if life moved slower before technology. I’m not sure if humans had less worry in
their day-to-day lives. I do know they
had more time to think about it. Perhaps
that extra time and the ability to be still gave them more time to think
creatively about their problems. Maybe
it allowed them to develop plans and to think of all their possibilities and
arrive at the best solutions. Maybe that
explains why everyone seems to have more anxiety today.
Each semester my studio is filled with students who are
nearly paralyzed with anxiety. They have
so much to do and they have no time to do it.
And yet, every single one will have a well-maintained list of social
media apps on their phones. Many are
maintaining them during my class. But
brainstorming and sketching ideas? Ain’t
nobody got time for that.
I’m picking on students but I’m guilty as well. We all are.
I may have picked up my phone twice while typing this. But I can’t help but wonder what our world
would look like if we were to be still.
Would we be as impatient? Would
we be as anxious? Would we be more
creative?
What if we made a conscious effort to find out? What if we created opportunity to be still?
