From February 6th, 2009
By
Thom Gossom JR.
Can we reconnect?
“We can never go backward to the ‘Good old days,” Betty told me. A quiet, deep thinker, Betty was on a roll,
enjoying the conversation. Intellectual curiosity she called it.
“Intellectual curiosity,” I quizzed.
“Being curious about things beyond the obvious, the surface, the partisan, the ideology, the labels, and the chatter on the daily talk shows.”
Our conversation started innocently enough in a Walden Bookstore in Pensacola, Florida. My scheduled book signing that day attempted to compete with the Southeastern Conference championship football game between The University of Florida and The University of Alabama. The book signing and I were losing badly.
A rush of customers had come in early, but the mall and bookstore emptied as game time neared. Betty, a polite, courteous employee, 12 years my junior worried that I was lonely. We struck up a conversation. Initially, we tiptoed around small talk. Then we ventured into thoughtful talk, then current events and inevitably the “where did you grow up” talk which led to the “how good the good old days were,” talk.
“Were the good old days really that good for us all?” she questioned.
“Yes and no,” I concluded. “Individually what was a good time period for one was not necessarily so for the other.”
She nodded. We climbed to higher, more common ground. We extracted what was good about our respective “good old days” and found the commonalities.
Betty, an enlightened thinker didn’t base her responses on ideology, politics or where she’d grown up, (in Ohio) or where she now lived, (Pensacola, Florida). Her opinions were based on research, intelligence, reasoning, and her overall experiences. She reasoned the good old days were more about how we treated each other, being neighborly rather than a distant next-door neighbor.
In our mutual “good old days,” we remembered the division between children, teenagers, young adults, adults, and seniors and how those divisions made stronger, more intact loving families. We remembered skills handed down to us by our parents, grandparents and neighbors. Skills that today still give us a feeling of accomplishment and self-worth. We discussed life philosophies such as working, saving and planning over time for our pleasures. No instant fixes. We discussed words like respect, integrity and dignity and how they were applied to those who earned them regardless of social position and not applied to politicians, slimy businessmen and women and/or criminals who abuse the privilege while trying to prove his/her innocence. We talked about having time to listen and being tolerant of others. Respecting others point of view.
Betty explained that all these things were the reason she worked in a bookstore. “Not for the money. Interesting people come in everyday,” she said. “I get to learn. I meet people like you and enjoy it so much.”
Betty had me thinking, but also a few others.
We had drawn a crowd of bookstore employees and a couple of non-football loving customers. The conversation was the hit of the now almost empty mall.
Then Betty threw it out there. “Maybe we can reconnect.”
How?
Betty started, “We need to remove or diminish distractions to our daily lives.”
“Distractions,” the blond twenty something year old, Amy asked?
“Yes,” Betty responded. “Anything that keeps us from reaching our potential in our daily relationships. Anything that we rely on other than ourselves, and those we relate to.”
“Technology,” Amy squinted her face together.
“Yes,” Betty answered, “Any technology that helps us do things faster but builds boundaries around our persona, like a privacy fence built to keep everyone out. We have to use technology as a tool. It cannot substitute for feelings, emotion, and understanding. How many times have you worried that an e-mail could be misunderstood because the emotion could be misinterpreted?”
A couple of customers quietly reached and turned their cell phones off. Betty smiled. In our 24/7 all-accessible phone, e-mail, text message, twitter world, Betty had scored a small victory. Our communication was enhanced by our ability to listen, to look into each other’s eyes, understand and respond with intelligence. “Just like in the good ole days,” I thought.
Can we reconnect? It was Betty’s question again.
Can intelligence, thinking, reasoning, reading, processing information and forming a reasoned opinion reconnect us amidst all the noise and chatter of talking heads, red state, and blue state divisions, hidden resentments toward those that are different.
Yes, we can. We agreed. How? With enthusiasm the suggestions started to flow from what was now a small crowd.
“Turn off the gadgets for a while, whether once a day, once a week, once in a blue moon. Try going gadget free for a day.”
“Rely solely on yourself for your relationship with yourself and others.”
“Refuse to communicate and be informed through intermediaries. That means give up the emotional media loud mouth that instead of inspiring you to think tells you what to think.’
“Give the ‘gotcha television journalism’ a break. It’s not about you anyway it’s about the pretty reporter, every hair in place, who breaks the story.”
“Embrace something or somebody that is different. We spend so much time with others like ourselves, until those that are different, become ‘those people.’ Don’t approach others with a ‘missionary’ mentality. The ‘different’ people may not need saving. Instead, learn from them, their life, what makes them interesting? What is it about the differences that make you see them differently?”
“Embrace someone’s viewpoint that is different from yours. You may learn something.”
“Remove some of the boundaries. Get out of your car. Ride a bike, or take a good walk. You’ll see the same houses and neighbors differently.”
“Renew hope.”
What a great signing! When my time was up, I said my goodbyes and hit the road hoping to catch the second half of the ballgame. On a high, I couldn’t stop thinking about the simple question that had made my day.
Can we reconnect?
Thanks to Betty, an employee at the Walden’s Bookstore in Pensacola, I’m willing to find out.
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