Pay attention!

I know what you are doing.  

You are staring at a screen.  

In order to read this, you have to.  Many of you won't even read the whole thing.  Some of you will just move on.  Others will skim through it, scroll down, and move onto something else.  Maybe you'll see a pretty picture and your focus will be drawn to that.  You'll see a shiny object, and your attention will be drawn to that.  Maybe you'll get a push notification.  Stop everything!  You gotta see what that is.  Then later when you try to focus on something important, you'll distract yourself.  You'll suffer from a combination of attention deficit and information overload.  All of those flashing lights, interesting pictures and headlines that capture your attention if only for a split second, pulling it in every direction possible.  

I want your attention too.  

If you're here, I want you to read this.  I'm trying to tell you something.  I'm trying to teach you something about life in the 21st century.  You know what life is, the part of human experience that you're missing out on because you're too busy looking at your handheld device.  It involves things like human relationships, important stuff that you need to accomplish, and a beautiful world that is just passing you by.  

It's hard today.  I get it.  I really do.  Your brain gets over-stimulated from all of the screen watching.  Maybe you're unable to focus on the important things because you are suffering from information overload.  Then you forget about what you were supposed to do.  You procrastinate.  

Do you remember what it was like to have real human interaction with your friends and loved ones?  Do you remember when you were able to focus on something meaningful? 

Even if you are able to focus on this blog post, your phone will probably go ding and you'll have to see what it was.  Maybe you'll get the attention you wanted from your social media post and you'll get that rush of dopamine that it causes.  Yay, So and So liked your post!  Yay, So and So commented.  Sure they cracked a joke, said something mean, but you got their attention.  Even if only for a second.

Try to focus on this.

Did you hear the story about the baby who drowned in the tub while his mother was on Facebook?  

Mom was allegedly on Facebook while baby drowned in tub (nypost.com)

Did you hear about the guy who beat his kid for distracting him from the video game he was playing? 

Dad Throws Baby Distracting Him From Video Games Against Wall: Police (newsweek.com)

Did you hear about the chick who caused a multi-car accident on the highway because she was using her cell phone while driving?

Brunswick woman accused of using cell phone before crash on I-295 in Portland (msn.com)

I hope it was worth it.

The point is that there are much more important things in life.  There are important things that need to get done but aren't because we are too focused on our distractions.

Life will go on without you