Distracted

We are an odd group. As a people we have learned to live in the tiniest of things.  With our focus on the small details of comfort have lost a sense that we should be looking at the longer perspective.  Each day at lunch I slip out to but a cheap coffee refill and steal some Wi-Fi.  As I sit here I realized how this culture, i.e., the coffee shop meeting space with its lattes and mocha chinos did not exist 20 years ago.  When I was coming up in the late 1970s there really was no equivalent. But it is sooooo damn important today.

Most of my socializing up through the end of law school was done sitting in mostly vacant parking lots with three or four cars pulled up and people drinking beer out of their trunks, in study lounges or in bars.  There were some dive restaurants with a counter and stools where older people bought a burger and a donut and some black joe.  But they were for a select few.  If we weren’t drinking we were sitting on the empty steps of a buildings.

It seems like what we have now focused on is something akin to a Japanese tea ceremony but without the formality.  We are diverted by short moments.  We are isolated by our tech. Perhaps not coincidentally our attention spans are so very tiny. About all we can hold in our mind is the thought needed to order using the phrase extra hot with an extra shot and half soy/half cream.

Nobody here in this aromatic box is talking about God or the lack of God.  Nobody who is listening to the hissing of coffee being steamed is talking about personal accountability.  Nobody here is talking about anything that will matter more than 24 hours from now.  What happened to make us so short sighted?

More importantly what can we do to move ourselves back to a point where we are wondering about obligation and duty?  What will trigger us to look at what it means to give of ourselves for the common good?  Damn if I know but I hope we figure it out.