I’ve been reading Josef Pieper’s Happiness & Contemplation. Take a gander at this quote from page 73:

What constitutes contemplation? First: silent perception of reality. Second: not thinking, but intuition; intuition is knowledge of what is present. Third: knowing accompanied by amazement. Only one who does not see the whole can be amazed.

I added the emphasis to the last portion because it resonates so strongly with me.

So often I am cloaked in this undulating shroud of ungrateful discontent. So often I see a person or set of circumstances and am immediately drawn into an examination of the wrong and lacking in the situation. Why? Because I forget or willfully overlook the fact that I do not see the whole of the matter at hand.

It’s easy to find her annoying until I try to comprehend the greater whole and, realizing I do not see it all, am surprised that she puts up with my behavior and does not find me simple-minded. I can be amazed only after recognizing that there are parts of the situation I do not comprehend.

It’s so comfortable to look at just a few inputs and decide that a project is stupid and not worth my time. But when I step back and try to comprehend the expectations, investments, and disappointments of all involved, I see that my initial declaration of waste was based on an incredibly limited perspective.

Approaching situations with “knowing accompanied by amazement,” that is, my existing knowledge tempered by the understanding that I cannot entirely grasp the whole, is something I’m trying to do more of.

It’s something to think about, to remember, or to possibly forget immediately. The choice is yours.

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It seems that we don’t use names the way we once did. There was a time when using another’s first name implied a certain level of relationship. We’d talk about George Clooney and refer to him as “George Clooney” and not “George.”

Then new media rolled up the beach. The 160 character limits of SMS meant brevity trumped propriety and in walked a new way of relating.

We’re all on a first-name basis now. George Clooney isn’t “George Clooney” because he’s replied to some of my tweets. He’s just “George” now. While the PR types seem pretty happy with the “cocktail party” atmosphere, they have little skin in the more personal side of online interactions.

When everybody is on a first-name basis, a level of intimacy is lost. While you once might have gone from calling me, “Mr. Simonds” to “Seth” as a way of expressing more intimate conversation, your words would be lost on me today. Just like George, everybody calls me Seth these days.

So how does one regain the intimate tone lost to new media? By replacing proper names with pronouns.

“Hi, Seth!” becomes, “Hey you!” (mostly from females)

“Hey Seth!” becomes, “Hey man” (primarily from males)

Isn’t that interesting?

Image: Ride

Today it will be a year since I had a cellphone for daily use.

How have I survived without a mobile device with me at all times? Quite simply.

I write more letters now than ever before. Real letters in unreliable script poured from whatever pen I happen to have on hand. I’ve taken a liking to buying boxes of gaudy cards from discount bins and using them instead of nice stationary. It adds a bit of whimsy and relies on existing production.

I use Skype, Google Chat, and some of 37Signals project management tools to carry the weight of business communication. Then there’s Twitter, of course. Email keeps everything together. That all takes place on a computer. There are no fire alarms or vibrating warnings that go off when an email lands in my inbox. No chirps warn me of tweets.

I know the sound of silence.

There has also been a downside. A disconnect that meant missed moments of fun conversation and perhaps a few extra dollars. But that’s it. No government has been overthrown, business gone bankrupt, or child lost a life because I didn’t have a cellphone at the ready. I was able to blunder and triumph, rise and fall, New Yorker and lolcatz–all without a cellphone.

I took a year away from frenetic tech because I wanted to see if life was really all that boring without a digital device in hand. I wanted to see if I really, truly needed to be available to everyone at all hours of the day or if my digital connectedness was just a half-hearted attempt at relevance. It turns out that yes, parts of life can be made more fulfilling with sparing use of tech. That shouldn’t come as a surprise.

What did surprise me was just how well all my existing contacts took to the shift in my communication preference. Friends shifted from offhand texts every day to more substantial email conversations. Family soon learned the joys of Skype and started using it with each other as well. Work contacts took it in stride.

It only took a few weeks and I was in a new groove. A groove with far fewer beeps and buzzes in it.

Now, as the year comes to a close, I look around and I’m not attracted to the smart phones anymore. I don’t like the idea of answering phone calls in the middle of a conversation (I once did so gravely). Why would I want to respond to tweets, texts, emails, and notices from multiple applications in addition to requests for verbal conversation? I wouldn’t.

I worry that we’ve become so caught up in the idea of always being “on” that we’ve lost sight of what it means to really be present in just one conversation. Does your phone go to the dinner table with you? Mine did. Does your phone come out at the slightest whiff of boredom? Mine did. I’m hoping to avoid most of that this time around.

My thought is to have something small, perhaps a netbook, that I can use for email and simple browsing. It will be big enough that I won’t carry it with me everywhere but small enough to fit in a day bag.

And for a phone? I’m looking for something that works just along the same lines of what Alexander Graham Bell imagined. I’d like to have something I can speak into and say things like, “you mean a lot to me” or, “it’s been great working with you” or perhaps, “I’m sorry” and be entirely present in my words.

I suppose I’ll have to sign up for Facebook again so I can create a group: “OMG, I lost mah phone ag4in. I can haz ur #?” It’ll be epic.

I’m kidding.

Or am I?

I’m glad for your thoughts (and phone recommendations).

Ever wonder why so many of the things you work so hard to do for your partner, family, and customers seem to go unnoticed and unappreciated?

People, by definition, are unable to show gratitude for things they don’t care about.

Consider the example of the hardworking parent and seemingly apathetic teenager: The parent has a list of things she works very hard to provide for her child. Let’s call these things “care points.” For the parent, care points are things like a house to live in, food to eat, transportation, and access to education. The teenager has a very different set of care points. In many cases, the teen cares most about status, social interactions, and a murky pool of worries that plague youth today. Neither parent nor teen is being intentionally unappreciative. They simply care about very different things.

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Are you conscious of the way you behave around new people?

Since moving to Mississippi, I have developed a fascination with the way people react to each other within the first few moments of meeting.

In New England, the typical first interaction between strangers involves contact of some sort and the trading of names. Shaking hands and giving at least a first name is par for the course.

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