in my VIEW Spring
in my VIEW Spring cleaning for the mind With noise from the television running, I looked up from the dinner table to realize that five phones were in play — texting, tweeting, downloading, answering emails, reading the online news. We were together in the same room but we weren’t with each other. When our youngest got a cell phone for Christmas this year, we became a family of users addicted to the immediacy of communication, news and games. The social media aspect is even worse. From a total loss of privacy to news of suicides and attempted suicides as young people are “outed” or teased mercilessly for being gay or fat or different, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have been turned into psychological weapons of mass destruction. A photo of a group of friends at the mall but someone wasn’t invited. A birthday party picture with some but not all of the classmates. A virtual brag wall for everything from a new purse to a child’s grades to a fancy vacation. The presumptuousness that causes people to share the pettiest of moments. Young people now date each other without ever seeing each other in person. Privacy lost. Modesty gone. Brains clogged. Intimacy changed. Family time wrecked. As parents, we have come to rely on and appreciate the ability to keep Michael G. Sarafa Co-Publisher constant tabs on our kids. While that is mostly a good thing, I often think about the sea change of difference of how our generation grew up vs. today’s kids. We got to see Mom after school and Dad when he got home from work. Our whole world was outside the back door. If the phone rang at all, it was probably something fairly important — the conversations were never that long. If plans changed or someone was going to be late, you had to roll with it. No mass text could be sent out to advise the world. An article in the February issue of Time Magazine makes the case that the technological forces that are splitting our attention into smaller and smaller pieces will continue and the internal urge to keep in constant touch with the outside world will rise with each generation. Mindfulness, the author argues, is the answer for an ever-connected world and the stress that accompanies it. The article goes on to describe mindfulness as “a philosophy intended to help quiet a busy mind, becoming more aware of the present moment and less caught up with what happened earlier or what’s coming.” I’ve come to start telling my kids to try to be aware of their surroundings — that when people are in their company to be with them. Everybody knows what I mean, right? They’re there, on the couch, in front of you. But they’re lost in another world, the cyber world I guess — and they are lost to the real world around them, the world that revolves around family and friends and live social relations. The learning that comes from direct communication, the ability to read a situation, to be approachable and make people feel comfortable. These things are not just niceties, they are life skills — essential, I believe, to raising well-rounded children. We have tried some new approaches in our home — some suggested in the Time article and others just common sense. No phones or TV during meals. Keep the phone chargers downstairs to keep the phones out of the bedrooms. Wake up and start your day before you start up with the internet, emails and texts. Dedicate time to no gadgets. Wear a watch so you don’t need your phone to tell time. Buy a camera so you don’t need your phone to take a picture. And get outside once in a while to breathe God’s fresh air. His Holiness Pope Francis has reminded us often about the importance of pursuing a culture of encounter — an encounter, he means, with each other, with the poor, with those less fortunate, and therefore with God. He is also a man who most obviously embraces the world. He even uses social media. But we also know that he takes time each day to be alone, either in prayer, meditation or simple quiet. He withdraws daily from the world, as it has been described. As the leader of the world’s one billion Catholics and now a sort of international hero, his schedule and the stress in his life must be enormous. But what do we see in him? Calmness. Eloquence. Poignancy. Mindfulness. Happiness. Completeness. As we start spring this May and turn our attention to the yards, garages and patios battered by a brutal winter, it might be a good time to think about some ways to help each other and our children with some spring cleaning ideas for our minds as well. Michael Sarafa is president of the Bank of Michigan and a co-publisher of the Chaldean News. OMC ManageMent grOup • Lender Services • Management • Board-Ups • Construction OMC Management Group 9930 Whittier Avenue Detroit, MI 48224 313-886-7000 www. 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