Recently, I attended a pickling workshop taught by a woman from Bangladesh. With her heavily accented English and her old world love for cooking and feeding people, she stands out in a world too busy and too distracted to cook, to spend time with family, or to slow down over what truly satisfies. Her matter of fact and intuitive cooking style was inspirational and authentic; devoid of pretense, expert mentality, or showmanship.

So I guess it should have come as no surprise that, though she had conveyed measurements and ingredient lists to our host who had then gone on to make up recipe sheets, what was on the paper and how she was actually cooking didn’t quite line up. It quickly became clear that she did not cook by numbers. Ever. She was just not a measuring cup, by the book, kind of woman. So much so, that it became kind of a running joke throughout the night about how often what she was actually doing differed from what was on the sheet, with at least one of us asking, “Wait, what did she just do? How much of that did she put in?”

Each time this happened she would sweetly smile and offer up a little shrug. And at one point, really more to herself than to us, she simply stated, “I believe in my hands.” My God, what a concept. What a life instruction in a world too often driven by a “paint by number” mentality; right and wrong according to some external measurement. Some thing or some one else’s version other than our own.

I believe in my hands says I believe in myself. I believe in what I sense and feel. It says I believe in my experience and I believe in something other than what the outside dictates. It says I believe in what nourishes and sustains, and that as sure as these are my hands, this is what I hold to, and this is what I find most dear.

How many of us no longer make the time to cultivate this type of knowing? A knowing, gained through and transcendent of, a specific skill set. Confidence created through the learning, the time spent, and the actual doing. A belief system and an experience of self-trust born out of learning a set of valuable life skills. An approach that truly satisfies and feeds the life of a human being. As well as those they come in contact with.

And how many of our children will never be given a chance to know this kind of experience? A way of being that can only be mastered by actually inhabiting the day to day requirements of the life of a human being. A kind of knowing that can only come from offering yourself up to something with love. A way of life that can only be had over years and years of devoting yourself to something truly worthwhile. And in the end, a way of inhabiting ourselves from the inside out; developing the kind of inner authority necessary for a life well lived and for valuable contributions made.

A kind of knowing, by the way, that will never, ever, come out of  a life squeezed off because of modern day busyness requirements or preferences for a screen.

When we are considering all that the screen technologies, along with the demands of keeping up, are offering to us and our children, can we also remember to consider what is being lost? All of the things that will never show up on a report card, which school you got into, what job you get, or what gets measured in a research study, simply because we did not know, or remember, to include them? And because there are just some things, the most important things, that can never be measured by an outside source, or ever known through our recently screen-obsessed myopic focus on what we are making most important in the living of our lives.

What do you believe in? What do we want our children to believe in? Do our day to day choices reflect these vital and necessary beliefs? Or are we living and teaching belief systems based on an inhumane pace along with lives filled to the brim with what is most decidedly not human? Not nourishing. Not the recipe for a life well-lived.

Last semester, while my college class was in the midst of our unit on Technology and Well-Being, the students were practicing mindfulness around how they used their devices. Students were reporting back that they mindlessly, and “for no reason,” found themselves obsessively picking up their phones looking for something; though too often they felt as though they could not name exactly what it was that they were looking for. This left them spending hours and hours checking and scrolling; even though there was nothing they were particularly interested in. Even though they recognized the time that they were wasting, and all of the ways that they were not getting to what they needed to be getting to.

Or more to the point, receiving any satisfaction around what it was that felt as though it just needed to be satisfied.

One student spoke of a remedy she had devised to combat this incessant and unconscious habit. She taped a sticky note to the back of her phone with the words; “Why am I here?” It was not until recently, after recounting this tip to a new class, that the enormity of the enormity of the question really hit me.This was not merely a question posed to help someone pause in order to become more conscious of their choices around technology. Instead, this is the most fundamental, far-reaching, and essential question that any of us can ask of ourselves. Ever.

To choose to make this so visible, so front and center in the day to day, is nothing short of revolutionary in a world gone mad with forgetting the value and the importance of why it is that we are actually here. For in truth, we are talking about nothing less than this when it comes to how we are living our lives; most especially around how we are choosing to use the technologies.

Do you know why you are here? Are you the least bit interested in why you are here? Do you even know you are here at all?  

And if you are, why would you ever give that precious knowing and exploration over to a machine? Why would we ever train our children to believe that their net worth, their very reason for being here, is based on what phone they own, what picture they post, or how many levels they have reached?

It isn’t supposed to be like this. This isn’t supposed to be happening. This isn’t supposed to be here. It’s not supposed to be so difficult, so… How many times a day do we think or believe some version of that? Some story around how things should, or could, or must be, different. Other, than how they actually are.

If it would all just go our way immediately and seamlessly, be more to our liking, then, finally, things would be better. Easier. More of what we really deserve, need, or want.

But what if there is a reason? What if there is a point for all the stuff we do not like or want? What if we are not far-thinking enough to know that not having it as we want it, when we want it, is precisely what we need; for one reason or another. And what if, finding a way to include all of the things that we do not want, serves as an avenue for getting clearer on what we really do want, believe in, or value? What if what we want, and do not want, are two inseparable sides of a necessary coin?

Likely there is not a single one of us who has not lived through what we did not want. What we found to be harmful, disappointing, overwhelming, frustrating, offensive, and more. Something that we felt just should not be as it is. And then, how many of us, by living through what it was that we did not want, come to have a clearer picture of what we really did want. That there was a gain to be had by being in association with something that made us uncomfortable. Something we found undesirable. Impossible. Unbearable. Difficult. Inconvenient.

But now, as “luck and good fortune” would have it, it seems as though we are about to be in the historically “enviable” position of being the first humans beings on the planet to live a “friction-less existence” as promised to us by the makers of Siri, Alexa, and other technological personal assistants. It seems we are on the threshold now of an existence that will no longer require us to put up with the things in daily life that we find inconvenient, require too much of our effort, or that try our patience. That our smart new assistants will pave the way for a friction-free life. And we will finally be happy. Free of everything that disturbs.

Is this an ideal we should be aspiring to? Is this a value we want to pass onto the generations to come? And when we are considering all that we are gaining here, in the true fashion of looking at both sides of the coin, what does the other side say in terms of what we might be losing?

In discovering what is being lost, can we then go on to claim what we never want to let go of in the first place?

Of course, none of the ads for our new and improved lives with our ever-available, on-call assistants will ever mention that even with all of our new ease and conveniences, happiness remains ever more an inside job. One that is born of our own making, and one that by nature cannot be had by whisking away what disturbs. One that cannot be promised to us by another. Even if that other is as “smart” and infallible as a machine.

It is also worth considering that in modern times we are equating never having to wait to receive a purchased online good, having immediate access to any song ever written, or any question we might have be spoken aloud and answered instantaneously, with what makes for an amazing life. A redefining of our lives is occurring here through the screen technologies that presupposes life would be better if we should never want, or wait, be disturbed, or go without.

Is this true, possible, or even desirable to expect?

Inspired by The Abraham Teachings