Why Our Digital Age Love Isn't Really Love at All

Photograph taken by Joel Allegretto.

“Instructions for living a life. 
Pay attention. 
Be astonished. 
Tell about it.”
- Mary Oliver

As I read these words, I cringe a little. My stomach knots as I think of how far I am from practicing the art of being present—the art of simply being and the art of truly knowing those around me. 

I think it’s exactly that—an art—one that doesn’t come easily or naturally in our world of iPhones and iPads and iMacs and “I” instead of “you”. Somehow in our more-than-ever connected world, we are more disconnected than ever. We know how many followers each other has, where they ate brunch this weekend, and what new plant they bought for their home ... but what we don’t know is ... how they are doing the first Father’s day without their dad, if their rocky marriage has steadied at all, or if they ever got a call back from that one job they’ve been persistently preparing months for.

Here we are, with all this information about people, and yet no true proximity to them. And so this empty information somehow falsely satisfies us to think we “know” what’s going on. Yet our friends in Florida or our family members in California are going through one of the hardest seasons of their life and we don’t even know it—because our affection and commitment has been digitalized and cheapened. 

We are scared of hearing the hard things in their lives.
Because hearing hard things hold us responsible to care, to pray, and maybe even to hop on a plane to hug the fragile heart crying on the other side of the line. 
We are scared of telling the hard things in our lives.
Because telling hard things lets people know that we actually aren’t okay, and what is more pride-shattering than that?

....Read the rest here in my guest post on my friend Rachel's blog today.