Just When I Thought It Wouldn't Happen...

In my last post, "Connection" (6/23/14,) I lamented how focused everyone seems to be on their devices these days and to the impact that has had on diminished human connection. For several days I put my smartphone away as I said I would with the intention to connect, but sadly everyone else seemed glued to their own. Then just two days ago when I thought it wouldn't happen, connection everywhere!

While I am clear that both my intention for find connection and my behavior was different, I made connections with people all Thursday evening.  With my device put away, I engaged in light banter with the cashier with a nose piercing and a beautiful smile at the frozen yogurt shop, and then I walked over to the Square to eat my yogurt and noticed a lot of activity.  There were probably 75-100 people taking a yoga class in the park.  I don't know if that generated the energy, but there were lots of people milling about...with hardly an electronic device in sight.  Someone even asked for directions instead of consulting the iPad tucked under his arm.

The curiosity to me was whether this only happened on yoga class days or if this was a nightly occurrence that I'd been missing as I zipped home (usually much later) under this very park.  I was really astounded at how alive it was.  I plan to leave the office earlier this week and make a point of getting off the Metro to explore. 

I was feeling engaged with people again as I headed to a meeting that I've missed for most of the last year as my days have grown longer and longer and with that I've grown to feel more and more isolated.  There was a spring in my step as I walked the 3-4 blocks to the meeting.  The program was interesting and afterward, I noticed that people lingered and actually talked to each other.  I saw no one focused on his or her electronic device.  An interesting audience of thoughtful individuals, who ranged from 16 to 80, was mixing and sharing questions across almost every artificial demographic barrier. 

Although my work forces me to extravert most of the time, I am a serious introvert.  Usually I would have slipped out the door after the formal part of the meeting, but Thursday I mixed and had several very interesting conversations before walking to the Metro the long way.

That's where the biggest shock of the night occurred.  I sat next to a young man reading a real paper book on the Battle of Midway (WWII.)  I have a long-standing, but casual interest in history, and with the proliferation of WWII stories around the marking of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion, my normal interest was piqued further.  I said something to him about the book, and we were off.  We had a very robust conversation until my stop arrived way sooner than it usually seems to.

Friday I attended the weekly jazz concert at the Sculpture Garden at the National Museum of Art, where hundreds were interacting over music, dance, food, and beverage, and the most frequent use of devices were for cameras and to find friends in the crowd.  An animated two-year-old with a big white fabric flower in her hair held at least thirty adults around her spellbound as she explored and moved with the rhythms of the music.

I am heartened. People do still engage with each other face to face. At last over the last few days such encounters have scattered themselves generously across my path.  This evening I saw a commercial about the "good old days"--maybe in the 1980s and 90s.  There was a line that people answered more door bells than cell phones back then, and the voice over led to the moment where it said that some people were still able to slip through to those times, when we see a young woman sliding through an invisible wall to join a block party. 

I don't know if all this has been going on around me and I have missed it because I've not been looking or if I managed to slip through to a time when people really connected, but I liked it.  If I slipped through to another dimension, it is my intention to stay.  It seems like a good time.  It is Fourth of July week in the nation's capitol: that's always a gigantic party.  Whoo-hoo! Here I go...