Happy Fall

Happy Fall,

Here we are yet again. Another fall. Another season. The pace, though, feels unfamiliar.

The nonstop thoughts of the mind. The way our cell phones seem to have retrained even our adult brains. How easily our culture was hijacked right in front of us, all while we were being told that technology would make life easier.

Now so many of us are coping with changes in sleep, the constant reaching for our phones, the endless scrolling through subjects we did not even choose. Politics. Someone telling you that what you are doing is toxic. Sports. A baby monkey. It is all over the place.

What is that actually doing to us?

I thought I would address this head-on because I am living with the same problem. Sometimes it feels as though my brain has been hijacked. It takes more energy and focus now just to get myself back to an ordinary place.

I find myself fighting for attention from my partner while she is on her phone. My kids are watching a screen. I say I want more connection, and then sometimes I realize I am on my phone too. I tell myself I am not on it that often, but I am on it enough.

Where did we all go?

How did our attention get taken so easily? Were we so distracted that we did not even notice our lifestyles changing right in front of us?

I often wonder how this ends, or how it changes. What has to happen for the collective to say, “This is enough”? Or do we find ourselves in a longer cycle of disconnection before we begin to understand what we have given away?

What I keep asking is: How can we, as heart-minded people, take action and lead by example? Who can you inspire through an in-real-life connection? What routines can you interrupt in order to create new ones for yourself and your family?

There is something deeply adolescent about the way so much of our culture now operates. It is all mind and ego. Opinions over facts. Profits over people. Mine over ours.

And yet we already know something different.

We teach children to share. We teach them to listen. We teach them to take turns, to be kind, to look people in the eye, to care about something beyond themselves. Maybe we need to start practicing those lessons again as adults.

What we can do today is become more aware of how often our minds are pulling us toward things that are not even happening yet. We can notice when constant posting, reacting, consuming, and comparing are pulling us away from ourselves and from the people around us.

We have to find our way back.

Not by rejecting technology altogether, but by creating a different relationship with it. By building new rituals into our days. By remembering that being reachable at every moment is not the same as being connected.

This concerns all of us.

This is not simply about AI or cell phone addiction. It is about our humanity. It is about how our culture moves forward from here.

Are we able to learn from what is happening and inspire better choices? Can we shift, one person at a time, in the direction of the heart-mind?

Can you put the technology down and put your feet on the Earth?

Can you look someone you love in the eyes?

Can you sit somewhere without reaching for anything?

Can you allow yourself to be bored long enough to remember who you are?

Maybe that is where we begin.

How can you claim your humanity back?

Love,

Matthew