All Your Senses

When we talk about having different ways to experience the world and whether or not we're paying attention, one of the examples I always think of right away is the smart phone. 

I was a late adopter to the smart phone, only getting one in 2015 after becoming stranded on a deserted highway in another state and unable to access any resources that would help me to find my way home. It seemed prudent, then, to finally upgrade to a device that also carries the internet (and that doesn't require counting minutes on my plan). 

Honestly, I'm not a fan. 

One of the complaints that I have about my smart phone is that in case of emergency, it's absolutely no help at all. Maybe I just don't know how to use it as adeptly as kids these days, but give me my old flip phone, and I can get help. 

Picture it: you're in a car accident and your smart phone lands just out of reach. You can feel it, but you can't see it. How are you going to call 911? 

Maybe you know how to voice activate your phone or whatever. I don't. But give me my old flip phone, and I only need to feel it. My fingers can feel where the buttons are, and I can dial 911 without ever seeing my phone. Same thing if it's in my pocket. If I'm out walking around somewhere and sense danger, I don't have to pull a flip phone out of my pocket or give any audio clues that I'm seeking help to get it; I can just stick my fingers in my pocket and dial the numbers. Bam. Done. 

This blows the minds of some of the younger folk. The same folk who are amazed that I can type without looking at the keyboard. But the truth is that it's just a product of paying attention. It's a product of knowing where my fingers are and what happens when they move this or that way. It's a product of understanding what a keypad feels like. 

Keypad > Touchscreen any time, every time. 

But you give today's kid an actual phone, and they don't know how to use it. Their entire world is visual, with a little bit of audio mixed in. They don't have to use their sense of touch the way that my generation had to, so in case of emergency, they don't have that built-in back-up system that knows where they are in the world and how to navigate. They've never had to pay attention to it. It was my part of my daily existence. 

This is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about knowing what your world feels like. What it smells like. What it tastes like. What it sounds like. Not just what it looks like. 

In case of emergency, in case of failure, could you navigate the world in a non-dominant way? Have you been paying enough attention to know where you are if all of your visual cues were taken away? 

This isn't just about our physical senses. This is also a faith question. We'll get to that tomorrow.