I cannot help but notice that most people I see going about their business and pleasure in the city seem very busy. Even though we are all aware of the dangers of multitasking, we are apparently just too busy to avoid it. As I go around the city I watch mothers strolling their babies through the park while walking their dog, talking on a cell phone and drinking the seemingly ubiquitous and obligatory cup of coffee, usually the expensive kind. Who is getting the busy mother’s attention? Is it divided by the five activities she is doing simultaneously?
I watch someone holding up traffic while trying to park his oversized SUV. While backing up carefully so that he can fit the space that was created before SUVs were invented, he is on his cell phone, stirring his latte, and replacing the CD. The best part is that all this activity makes it easy for him to disregard the frustration on all the drivers forced to wait for him to finish his driving maneuver. He has practically transcended the here and now that surrounds him.
I know a single, retired woman with so many friends that she has no time to read their e-mails. She deletes all of them every day. I know a doctor who is so popular that one must apply to his personal e-mail address for permission to communicate with him. One person who uses that selection system said that her own daughter was denied access - access to send an e-mail to her own mother.
I know people who must travel whenever they are not busy to recuperate from all the work. They do all the work and are always busy so that they can afford the many vacations they need to take to recover. The dog is chasing his tail but doesn’t know it.
Literary agents are so busy that they cannot take the time to respond to your proposal and required first three chapters, but surely have time to read all the material. They have an hour, but not two minutes.
People have little time to write letters or even e-mails, so they correspond with friends and family by forwarding e-mails they got from others who had no time to write but were thinking of them. Or they call them on their cell phone and leave a message. This message will later be returned with another message. How did everyone get along before cell phones? Better?
I do not have a cell phone. I love the idea, but I don’t feel a need to get hooked into a two-year contract paying $50 or more a month for something I can easily live without. I am not an important person to whom people flock for help or advice. I don’t run my own business and am not on call at any local hospital. I do not believe there to be a great likelihood that the next call I miss will make the difference between life and death, wealth or poverty, fame or loneliness.
But what about everyone else? How did they get to be so busy and so obsessed with being available to all possible callers no matter who or when or where? Whether in a public bathroom or while ordering dinner at a fine restaurant, whether alone or with an intimate group or a large crowd, the ring of a cell phone is just too irresistible. Turn it off, and miss calls, are you crazy, why have a cell phone if you don’t use it?
With all this busyness, when is there time to think? When do we have a chance to evaluate our lives and the direction they are going? Can we read an article and sit and think about what it meant? Can we really take the time to share our children’s thoughts and feelings? Do we have the time to be truly intimate with another living being, including ourselves? Can we see and smell the roses as we speed past them talking on our cell phones?
Are we too busy to realize that our obsession with more and better symbolized and aggravated by our cell phones is destroying whatever intrinsic pleasure there is in life making everything we do simply a means to a future end, one that will never be good enough and for which we will have no time to enjoy?
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Is that your phone ringing? Or is it mine?
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