I was at my neighbourhood Yakun coffeeshop the other day, having a nice cup of ‘teh’, when two boys of primary school-going age walked in with their parents and plopped themselves down at the table in front of me and started burying their heads in their iPads. They each had an iPad and even when their father spoke to them, they hardly lifted their heads up from the games that they were playing. They were so intent and absorbed that they did not notice even when their mother joined them at the table with the cups of tea and coffee and kaya toast that she had ordered for them.

I thought that it was quite a pity. These were obviously working parents, who wanted to spend some time as a family during the weekends, catching up with their children after a long busy week. And here, the kids were too pre-occupied to even talk with them. Even worse, the parents seemed resigned to just staring at their kids, instead of asking their kids to put down their devices and start a conversation.

Yes, the iPad is useful as a distraction and an educational tool for kids every once in a while. But when it starts to eat into the face-to-face time that we need to put in with the people we care about, then it might be time to consider cutting back on the use of these handheld devices.

Not too long ago, one of my best friends and I were having what I thought was a deep conversation, when mid-sentence, she suddenly whipped out her phone and started typing a message back on her iPhone. Perhaps she was used to it, and didn’t think much about it, but I found it surprisingly rude.

So I have been making a conscious effort not to be pre-occupied with my phone when my daughter Claire comes by to show me her latest drawing or to tell me something she’s excited about sharing. But it’s surprisingly hard to pull oneself out of the grip of our handheld devices and to be present to the people around us.

I suppose it underscores the fact that as social media and handheld devices become more and more a part of our social fabric, it starts to intrude upon the time that we spend interacting face-to-face with others.

Yes, I know there is FaceTime and Skype, those video-conferencing tools that make it seem like you are talking in the same physical space. And when you are half a world away from someone, it is the next best thing to talking to them directly.

But when couples sit across each other at dinner, texting other people, instead of talking to each other, then I think it’s time to turn off those phones and start talking.

A few months ago, Claire and I watched the animated Disney movie Wall-E, about a robot tasked with cleaning up a future waste-covered Earth. In the movie, there is a scene where people are floating about, enclosed in their bubble-like hovercrafts, plugged-in to the ship’s main entertainment portal, and numbingly unaware of their surroundings, or even the people that are talking to them.

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These days, one doesn’t have to step too far into the imagined future to experience a world such as this. Just take an MRT train anywhere, and chances are, most of the commuters are either watching Korean dramas on their phone, texting, or listening to music, oblivious to the blaring Public Service announcement in Singapore’s four official languages, to watch out for ‘suspicious packages’. After all who has time to observe anyone else when all eyes are buried in their handheld devices.

I miss the good old days when people would just stare at each other, observe, kaypoh and perhaps exchange a smile or some small talk. These days people ‘kaypoh’ by Googling what they want to kaypoh about and tuning in to YouTube.

Last October, Kavin took care of Claire for a day, while I took a nice drive up the coast of California to stay overnight at a monastery in Big Sur where there was no internet, no cell phone reception, nada.

And somehow in that silence, I could hear myself think again.

Free from all the hassle and pressure of having to check my phone or email or think that I needed to surf some website to know the latest news, I was able to focus on my surroundings.

I was, so to speak, un-plugged from ‘The Matrix’.

So, I joined the Benedictine monks in their Gregorian-chant prayers to mark the end of the day, breathed in the sea-scented air, stayed up late to catch the light of the moon and stars in that delightfully clear night sky, journaled my thoughts and gave thanks for my blessings.

I woke up early the next morning to the song of sea otters greeting the gradual pinking of the sky as the sunrise slowly gave birth to the sea and sky divide.

Like a windshield wiper clearing away the grit and grime, it was great to be able to see more clearly amidst the clutter; It was just 24 hours of being un-plugged from technology, but I felt more attuned and more eager to hear the real voices that were truly important to me, the sound of my child’s laughter, the conversations with my spouse and friends, the whisper of God’s voice.

And just like those characters in Wall-E, I was astounded by the beauty of the real world around me. A world that no matter how ‘real’ virtual reality or technology might get close to portraying, will only be truly real when seen through our own eyes and felt with our own hearts.

Top photo from Adventures of Joy.

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