There are now four drivers in our family sharing two cars. Most of the time it works. But some of the time, someone is disgruntled over not getting what they want, when they want it. In between there is negotiation and compromise, the need to prioritize and to be organized. And while at times I have someone snarling, maybe a husband or a kid, I would not change a thing. Why? Because it is not good for anyone, our kids especially, to get what they want whenever they want it.

We live in a time where the learned skill of sharing and compromising is fast moving towards extinction. With the advent of personal devices and cell phones, there is less and less need to wait or to be “inconvenienced.” There is no waiting for your turn to use the phone. No negotiation necessary when someone else is having what they consider to be an epic phone conversation while you wait, fuming, due to the delay of the important and epic conversation you are waiting to have. There is no need to compromise on a movie choice as everyone can go off to their own corners and watch, alone, exactly what it is that they wanted to watch. No need to learn patience, an open mind or turn taking here. No need for the demands of a shared experience. Who needs that? And as for music, well, no need here either. Just pop in your ear buds connected to your favorite playlists and off you go. No messy conversations or negotiations around people’s different tastes in music. No need to learn about another person’s point of view or get introduced to something you would not have gotten into on your own. Who needs that difficulty? This is so much easier. So much better.

Up until last year, four of us shared an Ipod. It began when my daughter was in fourth grade and she and I received it to share as a Christmas gift. In no time at all though the other two, husband and son, had also somehow claimed a share. We had to talk about things like who would have it at certain times and how much music anyone could put on, taking up the ever shrinking amount of sacred space. Was 178 Green Day songs really reasonable? Someone thought “Yes, absolutely!”, while another thought indignantly, “This is a misuse of the space!”

But beyond the squabbling, and in between the “I didn’t get what I wanted” and “How come he got it”, is a universe of absolutely required experience if you hope to live reasonably on the planet amongst other people. We must learn how to share and how especially to navigate when it seems as though you getting what you want is at the expense of what I want. And it needs to be built into the living of our lives so that it is in our children’s bones, as opposed to some syrupy platitude that we roll out about the importance of sharing and compromise with no real effort required by anyone. This inability to navigate competing needs is at the heart of every single war and piece of terrorism we suffer through. And while we may not be able to weigh in much on the world stage, we as the adults can absolutely weigh in on the day to day around how many things and experiences we give to our children and the ways in which they either teach them that they can have what they want whenever they want it, or that we can all get what we want, eventually, with a little effort and some good will. And that perhaps, most importantly, the waiting and the compromise is of equal to and sometimes of greater importance than the getting.

As our children grow more and more accustomed to screen mediated relationships and experiences, we as the adults owe it to them to model what it really takes to be in a mutually satisfying relationship with other people; which by its nature requires sharing and compromise. What a lonely and cruel existence their lives will be without the need or the ability to traverse the challenges of being in relationship in a healthy and life sustaining way.

This past weekend, our farm hosted an herbal workshop. We spent the whole day outside identifying trees; learning about their medicinal properties and how to make medicine from them. We touched, smelled and tasted. We sat in the habitats that support the trees, learning about the plants that coexist with them. And while we sat in a field overlooking all of this, we learned even more from a woman I have grown to love and respect. Because of her plant knowledge, her feel for the natural world, her earthy and honest nature, she inspires me to want to learn and live this knowledge. She helps me to stretch myself not just intellectually, but in all ways.

Sure, I could have looked up everything we did on the Internet. This is certainly a common approach these days when we want to “learn” something. But I know much would have been lost. The “big picture” thinking, for instance, that she generated around bioregionalism would have been missing, along with all the questions that got generated from a diverse group of participants. Gone missing would have been the opportunity to engage all of our senses, which took the learning even deeper. Absent would have been what her own experience, sensibilities and enthusiasm brought to the table. I could argue that if you are looking purely for information, perhaps the Internet approach would suffice. I would wager, though, that in many applications something, perhaps many things, are being lost.

Take for instance what happened late in the day. As we sat around at lunch, while she made tea from Hemlock, one of the students noticed a branch was infested by the woolly adelgid, a tiny beetle from Asia that is wiping out the Hemlock population in our area. I could have gotten this piece of information off the Internet. But what happened next never could have been delivered by a machine. This typically light, easy-going woman got as somber as I have ever experienced her. It was palpable. It changed everything in those moments in a way that was beyond words and beyond reading information off a screen. I felt the seriousness of this disease and its impact on the forest through my contact with her. It changed me.

I am so worried about what is being lost for the up and coming generations who are receiving so much of their “education” via the screen. One of the great overlooked and unintended consequences of technology’s impact on our children is how many things are going missing from their lives. Regularly. Things like being engaged with all of their senses, along with the chance to know the world through more than just the lens of rational thinking. Or how about all of the the fragmented and of questionable value information dumps they receive daily, devoid of the credibility and big picture thinking that only a living being can offer another. And perhaps worst of all is the growing disregard for anything from the past, which includes teachers, elders and all of their accumulated wisdom. In the age of prometheum boards and virtual learning, where the role of the teacher is being reduced to downloader and button pusher, will the encounters with a machine convey the depth of feeling that can only come from another human being and their relationship to the material? Once these things are gone, will these generations even know to look for them or to miss  them?

Nothing other than the presence of this woman and her accumulated wisdom could have so impacted me the way that it did. Who and what are we leaving in the position of stretching, inspiring, calling forward and calling to action our younger generations? The machines…?

(Inspired by Jade)

My brother Patrick died of AIDS right before his 30th birthday. In the aftermath, I came upon a profound truth; our lives are comprised of reminders and distractions. Reminders being those things that help us to remember what is most important to us. Distractions being those things that divert our attention from what matters most.

These days we seem to be on an accelerated course of distraction as we play with and marvel at all the new “opportunities” we have via the screen technologies. This is nowhere more evident than with our children where the technologies offer continual and seemingly infinite avenues of distraction from their bodies, relationships, homework, time spent in nature, creative and reflective time, and on and on it goes. But how could they possibly know anything different given the way the grown-ups and the influences in their lives have made the technologies mean so much. And too often, too much.

In the work I do with families and college students around the impact of technology on their lives, I have literally amassed hundreds and hundreds of pages full of ideas, musings and suggestions. Indeed, I am regularly overwhelmed by the enormity of influence the screens are having on our homes and in our lives. However, when I cut through it all, it distills down to one essential question; “Do you know what matters most to you in all the world and are you living into that?” Knowing the answer to this is what provides us with the clarity and the protection we need to be in the presence of such powerful and pervasive distractions.

So, do you know what matters most to you? And while you may have an answer you would give in the tender and vulnerable moments of your life, are you actually living that, day to day? If someone followed you around day in and day out, noting what you did, how you spent your time, money and energy, what would they come up with? What would your kids say in an uncensored moment?

We teach our children the wrong thing when we teach them to live in a perpetual state of screen distraction. And, just like my brother, we will all die. The question then becomes; will we have lived and taught our children to live lives that mattered?