I witnessed a perfect moment the other day. A young person was skateboarding down a sidewalk and stopped at an intersection for a red light. It was one of those signals with a “crosswalk countdown” display. As the young man kicked up his board at the corner, the countdown was switching from three seconds to two.
Apparently, two seconds is just the right amount of time to check your Facebook feed.
For some time now, I’ve mourned the loss of actual silence. I think there’s a much deeper problem, though, in our loss of internal silence. More and more, we seem incapable of entertaining ourselves with our own thoughts for more than a few seconds.
When you have to wait in a line or get caught by a train, how do you fill the time? If you’re immediately reaching for a smartphone, or even a book, you might be cheating yourself.
Try this. The next time you have some unstructured time to kill, don’t reach for anything. Instead, spend the time thinking about string. Or sealing wax. Or cabbages.
With just a few moments to wander, your mind can take you to amazing places. You just have to give it a chance to stop thinking about Facebook.