There is this young guy that works at the Starbucks near the church. He has just brown hair and just brown eyes. Not poetic brown. Not chocolate syrup hair and deep dark golden flecked soulful eyes. They are just brown. If you are desperate for an adjective to help picture him, it’d be “medium.”
I walked in and moved up to the counter as he stepped into place at the register. He began poking in his number and I began digging through my purse for my wallet. Somewhere in the depths of my purse, I heard my phone ding. A text, maybe? A new email?
“Good morning. How are you?” he recited, eyes on the screen in front of him.
“Fine, thanks,” I quickly replied. “I’ll have a…”
My hand was on my wallet, but I had seen my phone, and now I had the urge to pull it out and check that alert. I knew I could order and check it, but the flurry of thoughts scampering about in my brain gave me a millisecond of pause. Starbucks noises, foam, chairs scraping, an order coming in at the drive thru, phone dings, the zipper on my wallet and then again, just in my head I heard, “Good morning. How are you?” I set my wallet down and placed both hands on top of it and looked at him.
“Wait….I’m sorry,” I began.
Those just brown eyes met mine as I gave that little apology.
“I am good. How are you?”
He smiled and gave a quiet little chuckle.
“I am good, too, thanks.”
I smiled back and placed my order and we both went on about our day.
I am telling you about this almost nothing conversation with a boy with just brown eyes because in that moment I had this thought. How often do I casually rush through moments where of connection? Does someone have to be particularly interesting or the best and brightest to capture my attention? Or could it be that every person is someone who deserves eye contact and just basic consideration from me?
I have been thinking a lot lately about the impact of social media and technology on our culture. I heard a phrase from our pulpit at church over the past month,
“We live in a world that has never been more connected,
-Adrian Mills
yet never felt more isolated.”
I have thought of the implications of that, thought about the tremendous numbers of millennials and of our children who are struggling with anxiety and depression. I think through the scientific design of our species and others, that humans are, as I recently heard us called, “herd animals.” If not herds, we certainly are pack animals.
As I drove in this morning, listening to Rhythms For Life, Rebekah and Gabe Lyons’s podcast on connection over loneliness, I remembered those meeting those just brown eyes and that chuckle as we both flipped the switch from canned to genuine conversation. It took me to one last word, spoken by the person who I always want to have the last word in my life,
“DO YOU SEE THIS WOMAN?”
Jesus – Luke 7:44
I have more reflections on this passage that you can find in a post I wrote a few years ago, Do You See This Woman? which I invite you to read.
I am going to continue to think on these things, on connection and technology, on how I can be a part of the solution, on how I might need to change things in my own life.
I could use some feedback though, or some reassurance that we’re all in this together.
In your life, do you feel like the pull to the shallow connection technology provides is so much stronger than the pull to genuine connection?
How do you make keep that in balance in your life?
This is a conversation worth having, and it is a conversation worth having at depth, both online and in real life, face to face, your just brown eyes with my just blue-green eyes.
Sarah Kinzer 