love the one you're not with

Jun 15, 2021

Look at the image. The mobile has been removed and in so doing shows how our connection to our devices is disconnecting us from our most intimate moments. It's like we're learning a new intimacy. An intimacy where we equally love the device that disconnects us from the one we’re with.

 This is a new and disturbing mode of conscious awareness: intimate disconnection. This is the perspective of the photographer Eric Pickersgill, in a series of images he entitles Removed. We encounter representations of such disconnectedness every day. 

In a minute or two I hope to finish writing this post then pick up my kids from school. Whilst waiting in the playground the phone will be with me. I couldn't imagine it being anywhere other than in my back pocket. It will then see me through a perceived desultory moment or two prior to them emerging from their teacher's class, by which time I might well be caught up, disconnected, a hostage to the war on my attention.

Mindfulness teaches me to recognize this. It gives me space to check in with the moment when my attention becomes caught up with perceived needs. In that space, there is a moment to choose. But many of us are now oblivious to this space of choice. Many of us are unaware of how our choice has been taken away. 

We're too caught up. Too content with our disconnection. 

Is it possible that we've been distracted out of wanting our attention back, and that we love distraction more than we love the one we're with?