Are You Listening?

In 1999 (yes I know a million years ago) I was living in London.  I was there for a semester abroad and it was a time filled with fun memories, life lessons and moments I will never forget.  In the four months I was there, I was introduced to the term stimulus overload and soon after my move, I embodied the concept.  

At first London was overwhelming.  Everything was noisy and fast-paced and different that anything I'd lived near prior.  It was shocking how quickly my body adjusted.  The overwhelming was not something I could function with everyday, so my brain just tuned it out.  For example, the constant sirens in the neighborhood I shared with a local hospital soon became something my brain no longer recognized.  

This experience has been revisited in a new way over the past five plus years as the internet has taken over our lives.  Living online is something most of us do.  Its given us a great deal of connection in places we never had before, and its allowed us convenience, that I can't imagine living without.  The internet has also introduced us all to stimulus overload.  

The amount of messages, platforms, agendas, information, studies, life happenings, current events, perspectives, opportunities to serve and give has been beyond excess.  Mentally and emotionally we can't process all of it without tuning it all out and just becoming hardened to the issues our world faces.  Its important to ask some questions and add some intentionality to the seemingly mundane of everyday internet life.  

So here is my question: 

What speaks to you? 

What defines you and what do you give value to? 

There are many things vying for a place at the table but there isn't room for it all.  Its impossible to adequately care about all of it.  

It can all be important, but it can't all be important to you.  Giving a little to a lot means nothing is getting your undivided attention.  

Take some time today to narrow the field.  If we don't find purpose even in the messages we receive it all just becomes noise.  Noise is annoying.  

So where is your passion and how can you find more of that today?  What needs to go away from your brain space so you can focus on what matters?  

Organizing our thoughts and feelings is just as important as organizing our kitchen cabinets. 

Are you missing the important stuff because you've just shut down?   When the priorities speak, are you listening? 

Take some quiet time to take inventory and really think about how this applies to you.  I know I need this for myself.  Happy Wednesday folks!!! 

Does Your Opinion Really Matter?

In August 1999, I flew to London, England for my semester abroad.  It was an amazing experience and there is a lot I could share with you about those five months, but for the purpose of this blog post, I just want to share with you a small part of one day.  

My friend, Laura, had her mom and sister visiting and we went to a variety of touristy places with them.  One of our stops was Speaker’s Corner.  It is a place where anyone can come with their soap box and talk about anything they desire as long as its lawful in the eyes of the police.  It was a memorable experience.  

There was a homeless guy sitting in an inflatable chair while drinking wine talking about strange parts of his life.  I also remember a man discussing his religious belief as an atheistic-Christian (kind of seems like an oxymoron to me).  

In that corner there were maybe 12 people dawning a variety of wardrobes, props and opinions.  We walked down the line of speakers and listened into bits of words they shared and would discuss our thoughts to what they said.  Some speakers captured our attention for awhile while others just had us for a sentence or two.  When we had our fill, we went off to the next item of sightseeing on our agenda.  

It was fun.  

I haven’t been back to Speaker’s Corner in London since that day.  That was eighteen years ago.  I’ve since survived Y2K, graduated college, moved states twice, gotten married, had kids and lived a lot of life.  

When I think about the fun we had at that corner, it is because it was a visit.  We were able to be entertained, then move on.  

Speaker’s Corner would not have been as fun if I lived there.

Yet, I do live there.   So do you. 

Its called Social Media.  

Everyone has two cents on practically any and every topic and each one of us feel the need to share such two cents every couple of seconds to add to our feed in the form of statuses, pictures, videos, memes, links, etc.  

Its not that your opinion doesn’t matter, its just it doesn’t always need to be said.  (And to be fair, there is a reason they compare opinions to bottoms, because - sorry - but not every opinion is pleasant).  I marvel how often some big thing happens in our world that I will see 300 people share the exact same sentiment.  

It gets overwhelming.  I stop paying attention and I am just no longer having fun.   Social media has become this necessary evil in my life with a few perks.  I still love the connection with friends from all over the world and timeline in my life.  I love that I can reach out and make my voice heard when it matters.  

I don’t want to do away with all we have in the internet age, but I just want to be able to visit Speaker’s Corner and NOT LIVE THERE!  

Can’t we use a little self-restraint and not share every opinion?  I recognize the irony of this topic in my very own blog post, here sharing my opinion, but if we all shared one opinion in our blogs once a week - I would love that!  Reality is, opinions come in at a speed rivaling the speed of light for many people, not once a week.  

If we truly want to have an impact on the world, then maybe we should speak less often so our words have more weight when we do need to use them. 

Why Your Posts Are Part of the Problem

Yesterday, we elected a new President.   It wasn’t the Presidential Candidate I thought would win.  I really thought Clinton had it.  I was not a fan of either so I have no idea exactly how I feel, but I was more saddened (not surprised) when I opened up Facebook this morning.  Why was I saddened?  Because while we all have a right to share our opinion, most of us just shouldn’t!  

Over the past year I have read in a variety of books and articles how our lives online have hurt us.  I have been especially impacted by Craig Groeschel’s book, “#Struggles: Following Jesus in A Selfie-Centered World.” I don’t think social media is bad, I actually love it!  I have lived in 6 states and 2 foreign countries, travelled a lot in my earlier years and I love people, so it is an amazing way for me to be in the lives of so many far and wide.  

But we were never intended to live our lives online.  We were made for relationships.  Real relationships.  That means connecting our soul with others and that rarely happens online.  Online breeds superficial, unfiltered, edited responses to life.  It gives us a false sense of celebrity as we share our every move, thinking the world wants to know.  That may work with a small group of followers or friends but you would NEVER have a good coffee shop conversation with 1,000 people.  It just wouldn’t be productive or beneficial.  

I Corinthians 10:23 says "Everything is permissible," but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible," but not everything is edifying.

We are not famous.  Our platform is faulty if we are assuming it gives us celebrity.  We need to make our voice heard but unfortunately that voice gets lost in over saturated newsfeed.  People cannot take the overwhelming responses good, bad and ugly to the election process and the results we saw unfold into the wee-hours of this morning.  We were not made to effectively process all of that.  The non-stop barrage of in your face responses to the world enforces depressive tendencies and studies are now reflecting this connection with a rise in depression and suicide, I just read a great article in TIME magazine (November 7, 2016) about this very thing.  

When I was living in London for a semester during college, I got to experience the term stimulus overload.  Living by the hospital meant I heard sirens non-stop.  It was hard to sleep or focus as first, but by the time I came back to the States, I didn’t even notice the sound.  My brain couldn’t take it so it made the proper adjustments and filtered out the sound so I could function.  I see this same phenomenon happening online.  The very tool that once gave us a voice is now silencing it because its just too much! 

Face to face communication involves non-verbal communication that get lost in our social media posts, not to mention unscripted conversations include more than 140 characters.  You may drop a controversial bomb in the midst of a two-hour lunch with your bestie, but the take away is tons of other topics and perspectives.  It adds to the dimensions of the conversation and the relationship even if its disagreement, but social media is relational-free opinions and its only creating a divide between us and anyone who disagrees.  

Get offline, get out with friends, or upgrade an acquaintance to a friend by hanging out and having shared experiences.  Share those opinions over coffee and allow the opinion to do more than scroll across someone’s face in between classes, meetings or lines during errands.  Get used to not using the delete button when giving your two cents.  Take the chance to say it wrong and hear how you could have rephrased it.  You maybe be surprised how much better life is offline!