Relational Connection

Some People cross your path and change your whole direction-unknown

Tom and Jane came to me because every night when he gets home from work he and his wife Jane watch the tv in the kitchen, listening to the horrors the newscasters belt out as they prepare dinner, and then they sit down and eat together at the kitchen counter, both with their ipads at hand, as they take a bite and scroll. Very few words pass between the two during this time. After dinner, they go to the living room and turn on the tv and watch it together for a of couple hours, then they climb in bed for the night with their kindles. Tom and Jane complain that they feel disconnected, they know they love each other, but they simply can’t understand why they don’t feel closer, better connected. As Adel says, it’s like “Hello from the other side” is their relational dynamic.

During the day they pass texts back and forth, and they talk about what they will have for dinner, and who paid the gas bill. When they send a letter to one of their kids they copy the other via email, and they update their extended family with an email letter once a month. In their minds, clearly they are connected, and yet they feel so distant, one from the other.

This experience Tom and Jane describe is not new to me. I hear this almost daily at least once in my practice. Families are more connected than ever due to technology, and yet less connected, and so very intimately far apart. There is a chasm, they feel it, yet they can’t seem to understand how to fill it. They come to me to help them reconnect. To fill the void.

Tom and Jane are not the only people on our planet, of new and faster 5G technology, with this feeling of trying to find their way to better connection. Most of us are walking around with a mini computer in our pocket, which we refer to as our smart phone. How smart are we to be so involved with this device, that we lose touch with the world around us? We know that more people around the world have cell phones, than have ever had landlines. There are almost as many cell phones as there are people on the earth. It’s epidemic.

How is this affecting us individually and also our relationships? Considering that more people have cell phones in our world, than have flushing toilets, yowsa, the prospect of the effects is scary. Is this a silent disaster that is lurking to disconnect our world, even amid the most rapid technological connection ever? Are we connected in ways that are ruining our relationships, health and finances? We are currently the most obese and addicted society in history, is our disconnect a contribution to this unfortunate statistic?