Peek-a-boo. I see you.

Or maybe not.

There was an essay in the Sunday New York Times recently, called The Eye to Eye Challenge. It naturally caught my attention, and, my eye.   It was by Bruce Feiler who writes beautifully about life and especially family life.

Among other things, he has written a book titled “The Secrets of Happy Families” in which he encourages all of us to write down our “family stories….the good, the bad and the ugly” so that our children, and theirs, will see how we managed our lives, through thick and thin.

He has much to say about the digital age, has statistics to back up his troubling conclusions, and grabbed my attention with one particular statement: “We can’t become fully human until we learn to look into each others’ eyes.”

At a restaurant recently, we were seated next to a couple, near our age, I would say. They each had their iPhones, and iPads and not a word was spoken between them, to say nothing of eye contact. The table was quite close to ours so it was hard to ignore. I wondered if they had any “family stories.” If they do, they must not find them as compelling  as whoever was texting them at the moment.

It saddened me even though it was none of my business.   They lost an opportunity  to exchange thoughts, make plans, laugh, look into one another’s eyes. And they didn’t even have to cook dinner or wash dishes.

If you can’t take advantage of that, what else gets lost?

 

 

Thanks to Pixabay.com for the image