Not Severed, but Forgotten

“Here’s the thing about the inextricable connection between me and you, and the Syrian refugee, and the mother in the Congo: it cannot be severed, but it can be forgotten...”

I look up from my phone. My eyes attentively scan the carriage. Starting university has meant starting to use the often unreliable train services into Wellington. I’ve been lucky so far and haven’t been late to a lecture - yet. 

There are about 30 people around me. 25 of their heads are stiffly staring down at their machine. The other 5 wear machines around their head, listening and looking out the window. Well, until a notification alerts them to something more interesting than the view. Thirty people disconnected from each other yet unconcerned — because they are connected to the internet. 

It reminds me of a few Black Mirror episodes. The TV show critiques the power and use of our personal machines in an entertaining and sometimes pretty wacky way. Ironically, the audience of the popular program watches it on the very technology it warns us of. The sight of every person in the carriage totally immersed in their artificial world could easily make for a scene in the show.

Why does this disconnect exist? Have we really become so uninteresting to each other? If you're desperate for entertainment, ask the elderly person sitting next to you about their life and learn something meaningful. Ask the child what they're drawing and join them in the world they're creating. If you're answering work emails on your way home from an 8 hour day, let work stay at work and give your mind a break. 

Make the living person beside you more compelling than the machine in your hand. Force yourself to remember connection. Because if we forget, we lose more than just small talk with a stranger — we lose the very gifts that make us human. 

We forget how lucky we are that God has given us a voice, a mind to use our voice for good, and ears to listen to what others have to say.

My phone buzzes in my hand. 

Ooooo a new season of Black Mirror is ready to watch. 

“...and we have forgotten that we are connected to each other.”

- Brené Brown.