Ever since I acquired my cell phone, I have noticed how much it consumes the attention of everyone who has one.  I didn’t want a phone.  But as time went on, I felt the need to be more easily available to my family, especially my grandchildren and mother.  I would forget it at home regularly, and that would be a source of frustration to me.  I wasn’t attached to it at all in those days.  

More and more, I felt the need to have it so that other people could get ahold of me as well.  So now, I only occasionally leave it at home when I am out.  But I find that I do become more distracted when it is with me.

Working in a public high school, I witnessed cell phone addiction.  Young people who have always been around cell phones, think that they are a life necessity.  Therein lies the problem. There is now more than one generation of people who are addicted to distractions. The cell phone is just one example.  Everywhere one goes, people are engrossed in “things.”  I admit it, that when I get on my computer, I lose track of time because the distraction has an almost mesmerizing effect.  Distractions are attractive and powerful.

When we become distracted by things for excessive amounts of time, our ability to connect with each other suffers.  Cell phones are the most ubiquitous example, but there are many others. In restaurants, huge television sets with sports and news and music fill the air with multifaceted noise, making it difficult to have simple conversation.  You can forget about having a deep discussion in these places.

However, there is still a need in human beings to connect with one another.  Distractions are just obstacles to this.  They can be controlled.  Unfortunately, the desire to do so is suppressed by these tempting, time-consumers.  Of most concern to me, is the moments that we are missing, simply by being cut off from what is going on around us.  In these blocks of time, where we are not fully present, might something happen just around the corner or out of earshot that was more important than the distraction in which we were immersed?  I fear that this happens all too often.  How would we know?

These are just random thoughts about something I have observed and thought about a lot.  If people who are concerned about these issues put their heads together, who knows what creative ideas could come about?  Want to talk about it?

Listening is a gift that humans can give to one another as a selfless act of love.  I know a lot about this because I have had this gift generously given to me all of my life since birth.  My mother is not just good at it, she is truly gifted.  I have been the receiver of this gift so many times, that it would be impossible to count them all.

Listening is not just hearing, though it can be a part of it.  “Hearing” can be a function of the ear and never be used as a listening tool.  Listening requires total attention to the one who is speaking or otherwise communicating.  People who do not communicate vocally may be deaf signers or people with limits to their ability to make sounds.  I would like to refer to all communication as being equal for the purposes of this commentary.

If one does truly listen, it must be purposeful and attentive.  That’s why “listening” to signing individuals can be included in this.  The only difference is that the “listening” then, is done with the eyes.  In this way, listening is the same, as the most dramatic element of this art is done through these “windows to the soul.”

Another important aspect is the ability to stay still and silent, leave the quiet spaces alone, and not try to fill in the gaps that will naturally occur.  This is difficult, because we want to react and put ourselves into the conversation.  That is the problem.  Listening is not conversation.  It is the lack of conversation that allows the speaker to be heard unconditionally, in order to be  understood.  Conversation is not an act of love.  Listening is.

If one is fortunate enough to have such a listener in his or her life, they are blessed indeed.  And if one has been listened to in this manner, one can learn to be one.  But the most important thing one needs to have is the desire to be there for another person.  In fact, it occurs to me, that if one wants to even consider the possibility of world peace, one must be willing to learn this art.  What a wonder it would be to use our senses in this quest for harmony.  Is anyone listening?

Being accountable.  What does that mean today?  Does it just mean showing up for your job on time and doing what you are paid to do?  Is it paying your bills by the due date?  Does it mean accepting the consequences of one’s actions?  What about moral accountability?  Do we even know what that entails?

It seems to me, in my limited life experiences, that today, people don’t consider the moral consequences of things as they did when I was growing up.  Then, if a person did wrong, that person was expected to say “I’m sorry.”  and then pay the appropriate consequence.  That could be anything from fixing something that was broken, to paying for something, or even making amends by first asking for forgiveness. The atonement could range from something very simple to something that carried deep regret.  However, there was one thing that was certain.  People were expected to account for their actions.  A person couldn’t just decide whether to be accountable or not.  And people seemed to agree on this.  The fact that accountability was non-negotiable was essential to the natural order of things.

Today, there is a serious lack of moral consideration in our culture.  Grown out of materialism or too much exposure to violence, to acceptance of many types of prejudices, and any number of other factors, culturally, we have become a society that values ownership of things and money and power more than it does kindness and compassion.  Collectively, this has altered our moral compass.  There is even a sense that it is perfectly fine to do whatever a person wants, just because that person may own more than someone else.  It asserts the term, “buying power” into the realm of social justice as something that can be “paid for” if one has enough money.

So what is moral accountability, anyway?  After researching the meaning of this term, I have found that honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness and compassion were named as major aspects of this definition.   This jives with my interpretation.  And these are the values that need to be reintroduced into American culture.  Accountability is collectively decided by the citizens of a society.  Maybe we should be thinking of ways to be accountable to each other as caring people, concerned with the well-being of all of our citizens.  My challenge, to myself, is to daily think about the ways in which I can contribute to this end.  If we can decide together, that money and power are not more important than people, then we will come to a place of accountability in this life that will serve us well in the next.

If we are fortunate, we begin as babies, skin to skin, with our mother’s touch guiding us through the very first moments of life outside of the womb. There is even a name for these special moments.  The Sacred Hour is the uninterrupted skin-to-skin contact between mother and child, immediately after birth.  This power of touch, when presented to us so early in our existence, introduces an important part of lifelong, nurturing communication.  In this first hour of life, the values of this skin-to-skin connection are numerous.  Some of them are: stability of the heart rate and respiration, optimal brain development and physiologic stability.

These benefits and others are outlined in an article by Raylene Phillips MD/ BCLC FAAP which was referenced on more than half a dozen websites as I researched this subject.  I was surprised by the amount of data I found regarding skin-to-skin touch.  Perhaps this is because it is so essential to a person’s quality of life.

In my experience, the touch of a hand upon another person has the capacity to show support, kindness, empathy and compassion.  It can also express many other feelings.  It is a powerful way of communicating, often felt beyond the power of words.  That’s why we all need lots of warm, accepting, touch throughout our lives.

When caring for someone who is ill, a person often checks for fever by placing the back of the hand on that person’s forehead.  Children link their pinky fingers within a special friendship.  The examples of skin-to-skin contact are seemingly endless.

Unfortunately, I have found, that perhaps the time we may lack caring touch the most, is as we age.  I have worked in retirement facilities, where I have been in direct contact with people who do not have the frequent company of loved ones.  When reaching out to hold a hand that clasps mine tightly, and with deep intensity as I have experienced, the message to me is clear.  We NEED skin-to-skin interaction to have good quality of life.  In this day and age, may I suggest, that in the words of a Diana Ross hit, that we all look for ways to “Reach out and touch somebody’s hand.  Make this world a better place, if you can.”

I will always remember a dear friend of mine who once told me the story of her and her uncle.  One day, she and I had the opportunity to talk for hours when I accompanied her on a road trip to a job interview.  The whole time she was driving, we talked about so many things.  But the most wonderful thing was that I found out so much about her life before we met.  That’s when I found out about Uncle Fred.  Her Uncle Fred was the patriarch of the family.  And he loved my friend like he was her father and she was his daughter.  In fact, if they went somewhere together and someone assumed that she was his daughter, he wouldn’t correct them.

By her description of him and his love for her, it could only be described as “unconditional.”  She said of him, “I could have been swinging from a chandelier and he would have said, “That’s my girl!”  I remember thinking, “That’s how my Dad thinks about me.”  “That’s my girl!”  What an amazing, wonderful way to feel about someone!  It’s even more amazing to have someone feel that way about you.  I guess I always took it for granted that a dad would feel that way about his daughter.  Unfortunately, as I became older and lived outside the realm of my home, I found out that this is not necessarily true.

So often, I wonder why I was born into such a wonderful family, when there were others who experienced no such thing.  To say that this is unfair is an understatement.  It is not that lives lived with love are always perfect, but that love is powerful.  More than powerful, it is transformative. That’s why one should be loving.  And people should love even with self interest in mind, because we need love in our lives to give it meaning.  No person has control of the situation that they are born into.  Still, loving unconditionally, in as much as it can be an enormous challenge, has the power to change the world into a peaceful place to live.