6 weeks ago I took a break from social messaging. I feared I'd crash and burn if not. Say what? We know that over-working, over-training, or struggling to keep 8 kids clean and fed can lead to burn out. But which weakling burns out from sending a few text messages? Me. And, maybe, more of us than we realise.
‘Attention is a precursor to love’, said John-Mark Comer in his series on 'Unhurrying'*. That is,
We give attention to what we love, and
We come to love that which we give attention to.
Pause. What have I given my attention to today, this week, my whole adult life? Does it scare me?
Note the verb give. Though many things vie for our
attention, in the end its us that decides who - or what - gets it. We
can blame distractions in all their subtlety. But attention is given, not
stolen. We think we give it freely, but underneath it often costs.
If I placed any given minute of my life under the
microscope, I’d see my attention split between several different things. After
all, I am a woman: I pride myself in multitasking. I’m not about to give up this super-power any time soon.
But whilst multitasking may be the hallmark of efficiency in
many areas of life, I’m not sure if we should be applying it to our relationships,
namely, our messaging. Multi-tasking whilst messaging surely isn’t the hallmark
of loving relationships. And surely ‘efficiency’ isn’t the goal of loving
relationships. But this is how we function; what we have come to accept as normal
– because… we see no other alternative.
Think for a second: the difference between typing an
assignment or typing is condolences is… merely switching tabs on your internet
browser. The difference between scrolling on Facebook, scrolling through
meeting minutes or scrolling through the conversation on your family chat
is…just flicking between apps. Our brains treat them all the same way. Our
brains don’t have time to treat them any differently. The default
setting is to filter, skim read and pay only partial attention - lest something
more interesting pops up.
I’m no psychologist, but I imagine that our brains are
meant to function differently when we are engaged in something relational vs tasks
such as work/chores/study. Perhaps different settings are required or the
emotive centre gets an extra boost of blood - surely something should
change. The problem is, we spend all our waking hours engaged in multiple
conversations and other non-communicative tasks at the same time. Everything –
all the input - looks the same to our brain: we don’t so much as change body
position or take a breath between clicks and taps. No wonder we feel frazzled
and all-over-the-place. No wonder we can’t remember which jokes/comments/photos
belonged to which conversation. Of course we thought we sent
confirmation to the boss (when in fact we replied our mother).
There is a lot of talk of mindful eating nowadays. Rather
than snacking 24/7 or wolfing down McDonalds in the car, we’re encouraged to
cook a nutritious meal, sit down to eat and chew >20 times before swallowing
(wow, we’ve got to the stage where we take courses on how to sit down and
eat???). We’ve realised (gosh, how smart scientists are these days!)
the physical and mental health benefits of eating how our ancestors did.
What snacking is to nutrition, fragmented messaging is to
our relationships. In small quantities, to tie us over, and get something done,
they’re absolutely fine. Fun, even. But if they make up the bulk of our diet or
communication, it leaves us feeling, well, how I felt two months ago. Saturated,
but empty. Like I can’t keep up, and I never will. Most of us know the how it’s
like to ‘fail’ at a diet. I feel like I’m ‘failing’ my friends. They deserve
better than my partial attention, but how else do I manage the inbox
overload?
Whilst my Facebook feed is bombarded with suggestions of healthy meal kits, nutrition workshops and raw-food vegan diets, what I really want – and perhaps what we all need - is a course on ‘mindful messaging’. Is there a realistic alternative to dismembered communication?
If the opening definition of attention is true...could it be that we are losing our capacity to love?
____________
*https://bridgetown.church/teaching/unhurrying-with-a-rule-of-life/the-case-for-a-digital-asceticism/
No comments:
Post a Comment