Are you relentlessly connected?

How do we make sense of our relentlessly connected lives? Computers, Ipads and mobile phones all do wonderful things for us but they also impose huge burdens on us making it harder for us to focus on what or who is important. My Blackberry frustrates me, it never tires of incoming calls or alerting me to emails, bbm’s, whatsapps tweets and sms’s (my students tell me sms is now for dinosaurs!). Yet, I seldom keep it switched off – I might miss something important the voice of temptation whispers?! Just recently I had to take it in to have something fixed, it spent 2 weeks in the shop and I spent two weeks going through a serious crisis (clinically that’s called “withdrawal”!) Am I an addict? Or, should I ask, what or who is important?

I notice how some people cannot sit through Mass without checking their phones (yes, when you look down periodically during mass this priest does notice even though you think you are well concealed!). It’s frustrating when someone, while talking to you, is also having a conversation with someone else via bbm or whatsapp (we no longer have to watch how much we send as we have unlimited messaging services). We need to re-think our digital lives. Do we need a course on “digital etiquette” in our primary schools? I wonder.  Our lives have never before been confronted with endless connection possibilities but it has happened so fast we have not had the time to reflect on its consequences.  Our ability to be truly present to another seems to be endangered the more apps (traps?) we subscribe to. At the cinema my 120mins of “time-out” was destroyed by an enthusiastic facebooker connecting with the world – wouldn’t it have been cheaper to sit in the Cinema lobby and facebook for 120mins I wondered? Last week a conversation with someone was interrupted by their iphone because an insistent caller would not leave a message but kept calling (it wasn’t the phones’ fault and isn’t that what voicemail is for?). Technology has moulded strange habits and strange creatures. What of our religious lives?

In a recent column on his website (http://www.ronrolheiser.com/columnarchive/?id=619) Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI says that our modern technologies have made us as well informed as ever; we have more capability than any other generation. He is positive about the role that technology plays in our lives but then goes on to suggest that it has also robbed us of the capacity to stop. ”The spoken and unspoken expectation is that we be always available – and so too others.”   Rolheiser goes on to suggest that what technology has done is rob us of the Sabbath – a day of rest that God designed – when the ordinary pressures and busyness of life are shut out and we can truly rest. Technology has (is) robbed (robbing) us of the day of rest. “Can we step off the treadmill of phones and computers on Sunday and genuinely be available to celebrate Sabbath?” Rolheiser asks.

It’s an interesting question. Sunday Mass attendance is an obligation – it’s one way the Church invites us to keep the Sabbath. Have our gadgets brought us into a place and space where we are consistently breaking the first and fourth commandments. Ever heard “did I check email, bbm or send an sms on Sundays?” in the examination of conscience before confession? It sounds crazy but maybe Rolheiser does point to something we should be concerned about. We are allowing technology to rob us of genuine relationships, true presence to others, time-out and God. And we haven’t even noticed. If for no other reason don’t you just want “time-out”? I am beginning to think I need to seriously re-think my digital life, examine my conscience and go to confession before Lent ends… and turn off my gadgets. I need time out.