The other day I attended a meeting of my Strategic Planning Group in Woodbridge. During our coffee break, I made my way to the ladies room to freshen up. The meeting was in a large conference center that had very wide halls, almost ballroom size, with doors leading off to large conference and break out rooms on either side. Along the side walls were the usual tables with “convention” food- greasy cold cuts, dry rolls, odd flavored yogurts rolling around in melted ice and fruit that looked like plastic. But, I digress… The strangest thing happened when I exited the restroom and walked around the corner and entered the ballroom sized hallway. What I observed was surreal and stopped me in my tracks. First I noticed that there were only men in the hallway, quite a few of them. And, they were ALL mesmerized and speaking only into their cell phones. There had to have been twenty people walking aimlessly back and forth while totally engrossed in their individual conversations. It reminded me of a diagram from a high school science movie depicting the plight of molecules locked in a solid mass. Remember? All those individual molecules, vibrating with energy, but locked into place and bouncing off the molecule next to it, but not having any interaction with it. These guys reminded me of that. Has anyone reading this had that experience? A whole crowd of humans, in a room, not interacting on any level except avoiding walking into each other? I love my cell phone as much as anybody, but I hope I am never so self-absorbed and disconnected from the other people around me that I go into a coma like these folks did.
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1 comments:
Joanne,
What a great image, and sadly I can visualize it. How many of us have seen the couple at the restaurant and both are on the phone or texting rather than talking to each other?
Worse yet is when the phone takes precedence over a real need in the moment (like driving!) Or, for example, when a parent doesn't pay attention to their child because of the phone. I wrote a blog post about that very situation (http://tinyurl.com/yzwokdp). It is sad.
Don't love your phone more than your real life.
Thanks for the smile - molecule phoney men.
-Kim
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