Anywhere Else Than Here

Next month Kathy and I will have been married for 45 years. They say it’s hard to teach old dogs new tricks, but we’re learning one: no screen time during meals. We instead aim to enjoy a conversation with one another – and we’re doing it, albeit imperfectly.

Now if you feel that’s a tad legalistic, here are three reasons why we’re doing this out of love, not out of sense of duty, or law.

The first is how, as Christians, we’re to love wisdom. Screen time activates the left hemisphere, the half of the brain characterized by narrow attention, categorization, and dopamine reward-seeking. Digital screens and alerts force a tight, focused gaze on tiny data pieces that reward the viewer with dopamine hits of information.

Don’t underestimate the power of dopamine. It’s a chemical that causes addictions. And if you’ve ever known an addict, their first impulse is often to deny they’re an addict. But we can become addicted to information through our mobile devices. They provide endless reams of what is mostly useless information, making us dumb, not wise.

Screen time does this because our mobile devices are distraction machines. And with every distraction, our capacity for sustained reflection, which yields wisdom, is diminished. So no screen time for us during meals because we seek to love wisdom.

If you care to ponder this a bit more, meditate on two questions that T.S. Eliot asks in his 1934 poem The Rock: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” It’s been lost in our screen time.

Wisdom is recovered by being open and fully present to what actually – not digitally – presents itself to us. Iain McGilchrist says that is what the right hemisphere of the brain enables us to do, “to be present to the world in all its richness, complexity, and beauty.” This however requires less screen time, more time looking up, out, and at each other, opening ourselves to the world around us as it presents itself to us.

The second reason for no screen time during meals is to love one another. The Great Commandment is to love God and our neighbor. The word neighbor means “near one.” No human on earth is nearer to me than Kathy, and no human is closer to Kathy than me. No screen time means more time to discover more about each other, thereby loving each other better as we discover more about who we are and hope to be.

This becomes harder as the years go by. Kathy and I used to enjoy little get-aways to Florida in mid-winter. We’d go out to dinner. We’d look around. We’d see older married couples hunched over their meals, not talking to one another. We didn’t want that.

But we can become that. When we were engaged, we’d have lengthy conversations. We were discovering each other. These discoveries deepened after we were wed. Then came kids, work, bills – you get it. Easier to escape with a little screen time.

But think about what we’re saying. People who spend a lot of time in front of screens are saying I want to escape to somewhere else. I’d rather be anywhere else than here. Social media instantly takes us anywhere else in the world, with the result that we’re no longer fully present in the real world right in front of our face. We’re no longer fully present to others, to the wider world, to ourselves… and even to God.

Paul Kingsnorth recently elaborated on how the incessant noise and distractions of the modern world make us unable to be present to God:

Silence - or at least, quiet; peace – is the natural environment of the Spirit of God, it seems, and we live in the world which appears purposefully designed to make this a great struggle. The roar of traffic, the planes crossing the skies, the hum of the electric wires, the black rectangles in our pockets which fragment our attention, stimulate our passions and take us anywhere but the place where we stand. Whatever the world is it makes silence, or even quiet, almost an impossibility. That means we cannot hear God. And when we cannot hear God, we are lost.

“... the black rectangles in our pockets which fragment our attention.” Amen. All of which leads to the third reason why no screen time during meals: to love God. For Christians, our time on earth is for preparing to be presented to our husband, Jesus, as a pure virgin. The prepared bride then enjoys the wedding banquet.

The first disciples got a foretaste of the wedding banquet at the Last Supper. I doubt any of them were on their smartphone (see image above). So too Kathy and I get a foretaste of eternity with every meal. We are the Bride of Christ, and I doubt that she will be on her smartphone at the celestial wedding banquet. The Bride will instead be so overwhelmed by Who is fully present that she will be fully present to Him as well.

That’s love. That’s the main reason why Kathy and I have no screen time during meals: love. We hope to learn to love wisdom, love one another, and to love God. You might consider adopting the same spiritual discipline.