Tune Into Your World

Where would our world be without communication? Think about it. Dating back all the way back to the days of cavemen, we solely rely on communication to progress and increase productivity rates.

Now – what most don’t completely acknowledge is how although our communication has expanded across platforms in a digital realm, we are losing touch with the basis of communication, which is to create emotional human connections.

It’s incredible how we can communicate with friends or family abroad, discover if our first date is running late to dinner before we feel stood up and create global firms by conferencing through email or Skype. Sometimes we focus so long on the benefits we absentmindedly ignore how it’s damaging our society, but more importantly our people.

I ride the subways of New York City to and from work every single day and from what most people will tell you it’s chaos. The daily battle of pushing, sweating and rushing to make sure you get to your destination on time. But, you know what I find? I find it peaceful. I pulled out my headphones the other day to find it completely silent. I was dumbfounded. A New York City subway in silence? I looked around and started to understand — phones and headphones.

Everyday I observe thousands of different people I will probably never see again and they all have this common trend of being heads down or plugged in. Isn’t that how we work all day anyway? Why would we spend our few precious hours away from work this same exact way?

People have become so caught up in their digital lives that they fail to notice the lives of REAL people that surround their current environment. The UPS man who yearns for someone to help him pick up all the holiday packages that just fell off the cart, the artist from Peru selling his paintings on the side of the street, or even the little old man on crutches struggling to grocery shop. All of these instances I just mentioned were real. Real people looking for a smallest connection to make their struggle a little more bearable and accepted.

Our phones shouldn’t be used as crowns to make us feel high and almighty. Sometimes it takes tuning out of your own life and tuning into others to find the human connection we all desire. Then maybe, just maybe the more you start tuning into the lives of others, the more you will learn about yourself.

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