Memories of a night with my girls in Niagara falls a few years earlier crept in and I imagined them standing next to me enjoying the sights and sounds.
I reached for my phone and began snapping photos and videos....with every colourful explosion, imagining how wonderful it would be to share it with my girls once I returned home to them.
As I viewed the spectacular show through my phone, another memory surfaced.
It was Emilie's graduation from Junior Kindergarten.
Her Dad was not present, so I took lots of photos and a video of their songs...I remember how cute Miss Emilie looked with her crown upon her head, singing songs and generally tugging at parents heart strings....and then I remember the frowny face she made when she saw me peering through my phone at her.
I am not sure how, but instantly I knew, that little frown was because she thought I wasn't watching her. She thought, I was looking at my phone.
In that moment I made a point to lower my phone and make sure my sweet little kindie girl could see my eyes, and better yet, see that my eyes were on her.
How often do we find ourselves at a concert or a sporting event, watching the screens instead of the performers on stage or athletes in front of us...how often do we find ourselves so intent on capturing a moment, that we actually fail to experience it for ourselves.
In that darkened room oceans away, I shifted my phone a little to the left, and took in the colours and sights unfolding before me. I became more aware of the colours and the interesting ways in which they fell and lit up the sky. The sound was louder too. I was simply more present than I had been moments before and I better appreciated the experience as a whole.
Its tempting, in the world we live in , to filter everything, including our own lives. To stand behind a screen and safely edit and view the events in our day to day, to pick and choose our memories, to revisit later, or to fill in the spaces later on social media.
It has become common, to shift attention from pain, to cling to joy, to edit out awkward moments and to zoom in on the seemingly perfect ones.
Could it be that it feels safer, to view something in a detached manner, as opposed to immersing onself in real time? Its possible, yet this also robs us of the very opportunity to be human and to experience real life, as it is intended, with all of our senses engaged in a present moment.
Only when we are fully engaged can we begin to connect with others, with their feelings and our own. Allowing ourselves to become immersed in any given moment, gives our bodies and minds dominion over our senses and our understanding of what we are experiencing. It is the root of shared humanity and it is sadly lacking in our world today.
