Present in the moment

I was thinking just now how we get pigeonholed in school by what we are good at and even more often by what we are not good at. I was bad at math. I couldn't write an essay in an hour about a topic I didn't care about, or relate to, so I was bad at writing. I did not enjoy History or Geography. How is that possible!? Crappy teachers! I was average in just about everything, scraping by and loved only skiing and other sports. It wasn't until I was in college that I finally found something I could be passionate about thanks to a handful of good professors.

So, I just turned on Pandora music Chanel and the song by Paul Simon played:

When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Have you ever experienced the revelation and heard the lyrics for the first time even though you’ve heard the song hundreds of times? It happens to me a lot perhaps because English is not my native language. But perhaps even more so, because I am not paying attention. We also call that not being present in the moment. And how often is it, that we miss things around us just because we are now constantly bombarded by so much stimulation and all distractions? Can we have a conversation without looking at our phones? And if we are not looking at the phone, we are thinking about it and we are stressing about what we might be missing. Think about it! We are becoming slaves to this relatively new technology and it is changing us rapidly. 

Don’t forget, just because something is, doesn’t mean it is right or good for us. Yes, it has many benefits, but ......It makes me wonder what Steinbeck’s or Einstein's observation would be about this new phenomena.

And what does the end of this paragraph have to do with the beginning? Probably nothing! It’s just where the thought took me.