I confess that I have been known to check my email and FB on my phone when stopped at a light or while sitting in my car waiting in line but I’m starting to realize that I’m slowly falling into that hole of wanting to look down at my phone instead of engaging in the world around me.  I can’t tell you the number of people I see looking down at their phones as they walk in-between classes at school.  No chance of ever making eye contact there.  But then maybe that’s the point.

Still, I wonder what senses we’re slowly eroding away by not paying attention to what’s going on in our environment when we dive into playing with our phones.  There’s that biological theory that eventually we won’t be born with an appendix since we don’t use them anymore.  What senses might we lose by not using them?  I have noticed that more and more of the people I know have a harder time remembering names, events, dates, numbers…you name it. And it turns out that it’s not just people my age, or hormones or gender.  All kinds of people are having trouble with their memory.  Is it because we’re moving so fast that there are only so many byte spaces in our brain and we can’t hold anything more in them? Or are we quickly evolving to GOOGLING when we want an answer?  Or….are our brain waves being effected by all the technology using various waves to communicate?  There’s an article by David Dalka that would suggest so.  The good news is that there are many scientists working on this now according to a recent BBC New Article.

I’m grateful that I can enjoy a walk through our neighborhood and see all kinds of things going on that I might miss if I was staring at my phone such as  the beautiful Nighthawks soaring at dusk or one of our neighbor’s old dogs getting excited at seeing Paul coming up her street and that somehow, in spite of the horrendous drought we’re experiencing right now and the extremely hot summer there are some trees along our walking route that are sprouting fresh green leaves. I don’t know where they are finding the energy and resources for new buds….but they’re finding them.

On our morning walk today, there was a huge Harlequin Great Dane galumping back and forth across the street and a young girl with her dog on a leash frantically trying to keep her dog from attacking the Dane. Meanwhile, David was concerned that our little macho man would do the same thing. Luckily, I’d been raised with two Danes in my life so I know this one was just looking for fun (and that even though he was huge, he was still a puppy).  He came right to me when I called him and the little girl told me he lived in a house nearby. Sure enough, his home had the front door open and I called into see if anyone was home (they were so Dane and Master were reunited!).  I did help the Dane narrowly escape a nipping for his escapades but unfortunately there was not enough time for me to give him a thorough patting so that I could enjoy his exuberant energy.   If I’d been looking down at my phone, I could have missed so many cues from the little girl wanting to walk her dog on without the Dane, to the fact that she knew the Dane and knew where he lived to finally recognizing that he was a young pup in a big boy body and didn’t mean any harm.

So, when you’re out walking around put your phone in your pocket and take in what’s going on around you, you just might miss something important!

Great Danes playing!