I learned today …

Imagine you are driving in traffic, zipping right along — the music and speed, ahh maybe the breeze from the AC. Or….. maybe you are zipping into a building to drop off a package or like me, grabbing a pipping hot cup of coffee. You feel alive, you are doing what you want / love / and need. It’s amazing. The energy, it’s electrifying and invigorating.

But then… all of a sudden..

A red light.. and the feeling slips away

A line at the door…

Baristas are 10 orders backed up, and you are back in the queue.

What do you feel?

Emptiness .. a lack of purpose, but it was just there. I was just satisfied and felt full of life. So, to fill that void I grab… 

my phone

and scroll

and scroll

and tweet

and post

and story time….

and you know what … I feel the activity and it gave me a moment reprieve from the silence of my mind, but it isn’t enough. 

What if… instead

You didn’t grab your phone. What if you left it home for the day. What if…

Well, that is what I learned today. I did just that. I left my phone home and lived an entire day in society without it — no text messages (yes there was a dozen when I got home, nobody was left in a lurch); no social media; no creating content; no streaming content; no activity.

You see what I learned and became absolutely clear to me was that my enjoyment and day, and flow. It came from ACTION. Purposeful decisions I made that I felt were good for me today. The ACTIVITIES of filling time at stop lights, in lines, and between the pauses of my coffee date would have been just that — activity. Motion without purpose in the moment.

Certainly calling; replying to texts; making content for social media, and all the digital life can HAVE PURPOSE, but when it is chunked in between the actions of our day.. it becomes something far worse. It distracts and disrupts from the purposeful task at hand.

8/15/2020

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