All Around Us

Better what the eye sees than the roving of the appetite.

—Ecclesiastes 6:9

On a recent trip to Mexico, we realized our phones didn’t work unless we wanted to pay a fortune in data roaming charges, and my e-mail didn’t work on the desktop at the house. I checked my e-mail on my phone every morning to see if anything pressing had come up, but other than that, we did things the old-fashioned way: we left each other notes and set meeting places.

We sometimes missed each other, but there was something fantastic about saying, “I’ll see you when I get back.” Or, “they went for a walk, and maybe they’ll be back in an hour.” No constant texts, no calls back and forth from the grocery store, no check-in about whether the baby was still sleeping. No Twitter, no Facebook, no blog reading.

I felt a little jumpy, like something really major might be happening and I might miss it. But as time went on, I realized that the really major things were happening all around me. I had been missing them because my phone had become an extension of my hand, and what it said to people is that just being with them isn’t enough. This view of the ocean? Not enough. Your story? Not enough.