Ask yourself a simple question. How long can you
sustain doing one thing, and one thing alone, before your attention is pulled
away to something else? Perhaps it’s me, but everywhere I look people are
distracted; and their attention is pulled in every conceivable direction.
The greatest enemy is the mobile phone and I am the
worst culprit. It’s an addiction for me, but also the constant messages I
receive, I must admit I ignore sometimes, just to take a break and then just
pick up the phone to talk to that person, rather than message after message. It’s
not just the mobile phone though. Try to have a conversation with someone –
particularly those at a networking event – and you never quite feel you’ve got their
full attention. In some cases, they’re downright rude, and are surreptitiously
(or so they think!) scanning the room for the biggest fish that can make them feel
more important.
Even among friends and family, I often feel a
certain amount of internal chatter (theirs and mine) is clouding out the
headspace conducive to empathic listening. It’s particularly noticeable when
you don’t get to finish your sentence or they respond in a way that makes you
feel they’re not really listening. In saying the above, I’m not aware of anyone
sensing the opportunity for (radical) change, ie: for people to unplug from our
internet-obsessed world and go off grid for a while. Why is it that people have
such a short attention span? In simple terms, it comes down to wanting
everything now – the perfect job, house, partner, best computer and… life.
If I think back to the way my grandparents lived
their lives, the principal reason they weren’t drawn down the rabbit hole of
doing so much and being constantly distracted was because they were patient,
brought about by years of having to plan for, work hard, save money for those
long term goals and material possessions. They knew that to get anything they
had to work at things day after day. I
know this sounds awfully old fashioned but I’m not harking back to the good old
days for any other than reason than to make the point that if we had to work
towards something and work was itself meaningful we wouldn’t need, or so we
think, to have so many things to keep us occupied.
The ‘now’ question is whether by living at a time
of ever increasing change where we are constantly ‘on’ or ‘off’ to something
new, we’re actually living happier lives? If anything by allowing ourselves to
be constantly distracted we’re stretched so thin that there’s rarely enough
time to talk properly to our family let alone spend quality time on the things
we most enjoy. Imagine that you got rid of your mobile phone for a week, turned
off your email and unplugged from the web. Just taking those simple steps would
make a massive difference to your life. I suspect for many they would be scared
not just about what they might be missing but with all the free time, ie What
to do?
Too often we fill up our time without: (a) any
clear sense of where we’re headed; (b) if we’re doing the most important thing
as opposed the most urgent; and (c) if by doing one thing, we’re merely putting
off something else. If quality of life is important to us then killing all technology
distractions should be our #1 priority just for a bit to remember we have an
awesome country and life is too short not to put it bluntly, as “Ferris Bueller
says, ‘Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a
while, you could miss it”..
For more information about what I am wearing and
the awesome designer items on show, come take a walk to our destinations for
today: -
Vintage Study
Bin: - Zerkalo Vintage Study Bin
(dark) @
Zerkalo
Jacket: -Iridescent Jacket –
Black @ Purple
Moon
Earrings: Kunglers Earrings - Margarita - Pearl @ Shiny Shabby
Corset: -Zephyr Grey - Dead Dollz
Hair: - Little Bones, - Lo,
(tucked) – Blonde @ Little Bones
Head: - LeLutka.Mesh
Head-STELLA v1.3
Skin: - Helena Applier –
Glam Affair
Destination: Taken at Baby's Ear
