Well, well, well. This post surely hits the nail on the head for me!
From here: http://blogslikeagirl.tumblr.com/post/43493569937/the-truth-about-my-iproblem
Growing up my mom love, love, loved to tell my sister and I that people do not hear what we say. They listen to what we do.
Words matter, she’d say. Actions matter more.
This is an awkward thing for me, a self-catalogued “writer” from my
very earliest memory, to type. I believe in the power of words. My
absolute favorite quote of all time comes from author Margaret Atwood.
“A word after a word after a word is power”. Whenever I speak to
students at schools, I make them say it with me. I make them yell it. I
want them to understand the truth in there, that their power ultimately
comes from their ability to speak their truth. What my mom was trying
to say, all those years ago, is it is not just enough to speak your
truth. You have to live it.
As it is written in 1 John 3:18: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
I have been thinking about all of this almost nonstop since reading this blog
on iPhones and parenting Monday. Anybody who knows me knows I love my
iPhone. Even if you do not know me, you would know because you would see
me at a stoplight, at lunch with a friend, in line at a bookstore, at
the park with Vivian furtively and not-so-furtively scrolling through
Twitter/Gmail/Facebook/texts/FOXSports.com almost constantly. Nor is
mine simply an iPhone issue. I have an iProblem. I have a tendency to
walk into my house, my iPhone in my hand and proceed to open my Macbook
Air. I am embarrassed to admit that this, and my iPhone, have been at my
dinner table with my husband and daughter. Both often go with me into
my favorite chair after my daughter has gone to sleep, a constant
checking part of my time with my husband.
A quick aside: It is a damn lie to say truth always feels good.
Re-reading those sentences makes me want to hurl, or crawl into a hole,
or judge myself. I need to write it, though, because I know I am not
alone.
There is an easy out for me, of course. This is my job, to constantly
know what is happening, what needs to be written on, where Jets
quarterback Tim Tebow may be headed, what NFL players were salary cap
casualties and on and on. My profession is opinions and every opinion
absolutely needs to start with information. What I never stopped to ask
myself was what I missed when I was making sure I was not missing
anything.
This line from The 4littleFegusons blog I linked to especially struck
me: “Play time at the park will be over before you know it. The
childhood of your children will be gone before you know it. They won’t
always want to come to the park with you, Mommy. They won’t always spin
and twirl to make their new dress swish, they won’t always call out,
“WATCH ME!” There will come a point when they stop trying, stop calling
your name, stop bothering to interrupt your phone time. Because they
know … you’ve shown them, all these moments, that the phone is more
important than they are. They see you looking at it while waiting to
pick up brother from school, during playtime, at the dinner table, at
bedtime …”
I cried when I read this, not teared up but actual big fat tears
rolling down my face crying. This is me. As much as I do not want this
to be me, this is me. And it just slaps another layer onto my
working-mom guilt complex already in overdrive from being gone to cover
The Olympics in London, from missing a parent-teacher conference at my
daughter’s school because I was in New Orleans for The Super Bowl,
because I can not always be there.
What this was was a reminder that even when I am here I am not always here.
This is not to say I am never fully present or engaged. I am. A lot.
We do flash cards almost daily. Every night we snuggle in her bed and
read three books. We do “The Pray” nightly where we thank God for what
we consider our blessings. My smart little girl never varies her first
line “Dear God, I am thankful for everything …” What she was thankful
for Monday was her family. I know she knows I love her. I know, on The
Toni Morrison scale of maternal love, do your eyes light up each time
your child enters the room, I pass with flying colors. I have so many
good pictures and memories and moments with her and my husband, Mac, in
this first four years.
What I have been thinking about almost nonstop since reading that
blog is what I have missed with my face buried in my iPhone, and for
what? To discover that email pinging my inbox was just JCrew inviting me
to save 40 percent on already marked down items? Because I absolutely
have to see if any of my Facebook friends have answered “I ran for 30
minutes” in response to Facebook’s “What’s happening?” prompt? To read a
140-character opinion of a Wonderlic score, however delightfully
snarky?
I felt a little like Denzel Washington’s character in Flight when he
swipes that vodka bottle even though everything in his being says “no,
no, no” as I attempted to follow through on staying off of my iPhone
after grabbing Vivian from school on Monday. I told myself I am not
going to pick it up. I am going to be where I am. I repeated every yoga
mantra I have ever heard about presence and yet I checked my phone a
couple of times. It was not as much as normal. It was actually way, way
less. It still felt like too much.
And once you have started speeding down this information rabbit hole,
how do you reverse course? This is what I am trying to answer for
myself, how not only to tell my family they are the most important
things in my life but back that up with my actions. My goals, for right
now, are:
1) Phone goes on counter when I walk in with Vivian, and stays there until the next morning.
2) Do an hourly check of Gmail and Twitter, just to stay up to date.
3) Practice this iDiet not only with Vivian but with my husband and my friends as well.
4) Be gentle with myself.
In the words of my new favorite band, Fun, and their best song:
When you’re lost and alone, or sinking like a stone, carry on on on on on,
Jengel
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