Connection-Lite

 

When this book (‘this one wild and precious life’ by Sarah Wilson) looked up at me from a library shelf this week, I had to take it home. I had quoted this exact line, ‘this one wild and precious life’ by the poet Mary Oliver, in my previous post. When books call out to you, you listen.

In a chapter about how we endlessly scroll, all of us texting instead of picking up the phone and speaking, Wilson writes about what makes us disconnected when the illusion is that we are constantly plugged into everything. We use our devices to take the easy route of connecting. She calls this “Connection-lite”.

Isn’t that just the perfect word for it? We know exactly what she means.

Texting frees us from fully engaging in the moment, from a back-and-forth conversation or looking another person in the eye. Emailing allows us to distance ourselves. We can keep playing the ping-pong of connection because it feels safe, frees us from being vulnerable. Group chats are even safer. We throw out a, “hey, how are you all doing” and there, we’ve fulfilled a social obligation and we can retreat.

Wilson goes on to say that more than our lack of connection from others, what lurks underneath is a feeling of a missing connection from ourselves. It is this that makes many people afraid of sitting down, alone with their thoughts. We reach for our phones, a book, the remote, anything to distract ourselves.

She relates a story of how one day, whilst in Slovenia, she was sitting at an outdoor café on a public holiday. Across from her, she saw a lady dressed in red, sitting and just looking. No phone, no book, no chatty friend next to her. Just sitting and looking. When she approached her, the woman said that on rest days (public holidays), she liked to ‘sit and think nothing.’

Sit and think nothing.

I’m not one who shies away from aloneness. In fact, I actively seek it out. I live alone, travel alone, work from home alone, spend the bulk of my time alone. When I travel, I eat out alone, dining, wining or nibbling. I love people-watching. But I will often have a notebook with me, and scribble a few lines, or scroll through my phone.

What if, I thought, I went to a local café or restaurant around here and just sat and thought nothing? 

So that is what I did. Or tried to do. But do you know how hard it is to sit and think nothing? Near impossible. I looked at the people scurrying past the window. Where were they going with their stressed faces and hunched shoulders? And that one woman who left COBS bakery laden down with so many bags a store employee had to help her carry them to her car. Was she throwing a huge baked goods party or taking them to a local shelter? See? Not thinking nothing.

And those people, heads down, eyes on their phones, texting. Were they having heavy conversations or light, flirty banter? Was it deep connection or connection-lite? Would they call or meet the person they were texting, and would the conversation leave each one feeling satisfied? Or would one person feel like the conversation pie had been hogged? (I wrote this earlier post about conversation pie).

You know those exchanges I mean, where you are less than half a minute into speaking and the air is palpable with the impatience of the other, waiting to pounce and divert the dialogue (although that word means a two-way discourse) back to themselves.

What’s the remedy to this whole connection-lite culture? Engaging in more ‘curious conversation’ as Wilson puts it?

Wilson says, “When we feel disconnected and undernourished, we can often fall into the trap of distancing ourselves further by hating on the nearest person living ‘lite’ in one form or another (pretending, avoiding...)”

Ah, yes, guilty. Not of hating, but of passing swift judgements upon those who I think are being superficial, show-offy, self-absorbed. Instead, Wilson says, we should look closer and think, “I get you.” I get why you’re behaving this way; why you’re so scared of being seen as less than perfect because you need that validation; why you’re talking instead of pausing and listening because you need to be heard; why you’re dismissive of anything different because an alternative terrifies you; why you need to keep looking at your phone because you don’t know any other way of communicating. She says that if you think “I get you” often enough, you will feel the vulnerability of the other person and your judgement will shift to compassion.

She also suggests we use this phrase on ourselves.