When our worlds get too small there’s a bigger one we can turn to.

I learned last night from a guest, a young mom with her toddler and husband, staying at our river cabin, that the Medina river’s flow in front of our cabin has stopped. I think the best thing about the cabin is the river that flows just below it. As  I apologized, I was interrupted. The young mom told me they were enjoying their visit, especially one evening when they had fed some deer by hand below the deck of the cabin. 

I hung up the phone and quickly wrote all our upcoming Airbnb guests to let them know the river’s flow had stopped. I thought they should know the water there isn’t safe to enter. Flow means health. Stagnant water can mean danger. 

Years ago, my brother Al and I spent a few mornings enjoying his new JetSki‘s on the lake,  back when there was a lake. 

We flew across the mirror of water at 50 miles an hour, and I thrilled at the wind, thrilled at the sun, thrilled at the water spraying beside me, thrilled at the velocity. 

Sometimes we drove the jet ski’s at much slower speeds to where the river gently emptied into the lake. I maneuvered among boulders, watching for white water, directing the jet ski away to where the water was green and safe for me to move forward. Up we crept till the winding river’s current was too shallow to continue. 

The river was nature’s florid signature in colorful ink  on a contract I had with life and security. It was my heart’s consolation that there was more to the world than my short arms and sights could take hold of. What a relief to know my small world and its wobbling’s were safely contained within something bigger, where rivers flow and cypress trees tower.

In my mind’s eye I I see the river’s current come and go past the rocks on which I sit near my cabin. What I have is the moment. My hot feet refreshed from two hours or so of freshening up the cabin, hauling trash and weed eating the yard. I can neither keep that freshness nor give it away. 

I watch the water come and go. In my mind, it flows and keeps my hope and heart remembering this is how it goes: the water flows toward me, past me, and out beyond me, or my reach. 

It is a part of me, here now, then gone like a breath, a mysterious gift, like my brother, the sun, the trees and rocks. I don’t deserve or not deserve them. I remember them and their gifts flow within and through me to the next moment. 

This morning I read on my phone messages notes from each of the guests I wrote to last night. They thanked me for the information I sent them. Some may cancel their stay at the cabin. Others will come anyway, and take in the trees and stillness, the deer who come on their daily treks, early mornings and late in the dusk. They come to drink in, like the deer, the quiet and calm that reminds them, too, that there’s more out there, bigger and quieter than the wobbling’s of our work-world or our worries. More, much more.

Learn About Technology by Not Using It?

My student got up from her desk and went to stand at the front of the class. She was a young mother of a toddler she said. Her report would be on her experiences during her 100 Hours class project she had started in my class a week earlier. 

The 100 Hours assignment asked students to keep a written journal for a class presentation of their observations during a 100 hour abstinence from using any technology except for college-related purposes. That meant no TV, radio, music apps or social media normally used for entertainment purposes. The results from the assignment were always interesting, but none as much as the young mother's report would be.

When Is A Cell Phone More Than It Appears?

"One Saturday afternoon I was at home and I heard loud pounding on the front door," she told the class. "I ran to open it and saw my grandfather all shaken up. He asked me why I wasn't answering my phone and asked if everything was alright. He came in and I told him I wasn't using the phone for a few days because of this Communications class assignment." 

I held my breath, waiting to hear what her grandfather had to say. Teachers always think their assignments are good for students, but I'd never intended to frighten or worry family members.

The young lady at the front of the class continued, "He sat down on the sofa and we just started visiting. I noticed something was different, but I didn't know what. He talked about his childhood. He told me a story about his last name.  He said he had been adopted by his father when he was a boy, and that his birth name had been different. I asked him, 'Why haven't you ever told me this before now?' and he answered by gesturing with his empty hand to his ear, 'Well, you are always busy with your phone, you know. I didn't ever want to interrupt something important."

Wow. So that Saturday was a turning point in their relationship. Not only did she know more about her grandfather and how differently he interpreted her casual use of her cell phone, that day she found out her phone use might have kept her from ever knowing her grandfather's story. 

She then described another day leaving her house with her toddler without a phone. For the first time since living there she noticed that two doors down lived a child the same age as her daughter. She walked to her neighbor's house and introduced herself and her daughter. The moms got to know each other, now trade babysitting and enjoy each other's company. All because the student left the house and noticed the natural world around her instead of the phone in her palm.

The rest of the class presentations continued in the same vein. I remember one student reporting losing the buzzing sound in his ears after taking time off from technology, another reported sleeping better, and one older brother announced he would spend more face to face time with his younger brother and roommate, after discovering via the assignment that his phone habits caused his sibling to feel lonely.

New Research On Teens and Technology

The 100 Hours assignment I used to give to my college students came to mind when I read The Child Mind Institute's report on recent research about teens and social media, How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers. 

The report includes tips for parents who want to minimize the risks associated with technology. The good news is a lot can be done. Parents are the key. They model behaviors to their children from A-Z 24/7!!

Changing habits, especially those that creep up on you without your noticing is not easy, but the payoff, as I saw during semester after semester of the 100 Hours project, is definitely worth it. 

How to start:

Decide if a change in your tech use habits is needed. Observe yourself and your family for a few days around technology. Notice if things change when you remove the cell phone from your kitchen, living room, bedroom or office meeting. 

Do you notice communication if improved? See where less tech at certain times and places can take you. 

What options exist short of pulling the wifi connection out of the wall? (My wife's father was a chemistry professor. Each summer he pulled a tube out of the TV set and told his four kids the TV set was broken. The kids created their own entertainment and experiences instead of being shut in watching TV. Is there something to this "trick"?) 

You have options for changing your family's relationship with technology.

  

Start small and over time decide if you want to expand. Call a family meeting and ask for feedback on your questions about how technology affects how we live. 

Start by observing yourself and your own relationship to smart phones. Try a mini version of the 100 Hours assignment (Full Version Link For The Truly Brave)

Pick a time during your commute or a room in your home and decide to not use the phone there as much as possible. Try putting your phone out of reach, hearing or sight. Decide if you want to let others in on what you're doing or keep it to yourself? (As a life long habit changer, I recommend keeping silent about your inquiry for the first few days.)

How does it feel to not have your phone beside you? Do you notice any differences?

How do conversations change when in the middle of talking with someone they glance at or use their phone to text or answer a call? How does this make you feel?

Have you ever wondered how someone else feels when you are distracted by technology during a conversation?

Collect ideas from the whole family and then discuss ways your family can approach change. Change is hard, but some habits, especially those hastily-made, unexamined ones need to be examined!

Use technology with intention and purpose instead of out of habit or boredom. You can improve  your time during family meals, car-time, sleep patterns, and strengthen your family connections.