In a restaurant the other day, I heard two guys at a nearby table talking about the Memphis Grizzlies. They were trading information like broadcasters sitting courtside with microphones, sharing insights, earnestly channeling Pete Pranica and Brevin Knight, or maybe Stephen A. Smith:
“Coward’s got a great three-point stroke, but his perimeter defense is going to be a problem.”
“Maybe, but Iisalo is in love with him, so he’s going to get a shot at making the 10-man rotation.”
And on it went, as these guys delivered one clunky cliché after another, like a couple of pickle-ballers lurching around Centre Court at Wimbledon. C’mon, guys. If you’re going to talk loud enough that I can’t ignore you, please say something interesting or original. But no such luck.
When did we all become podcasters? When did regurgitating sports-talk radio chatter become an acceptable, non-ironic substitute for actual communication? We used to call that sort of conversation “small talk” — the kind of thing you did when you needed to kill time with someone you didn’t plan on being with for very long. Weather and sports were easy fallbacks.
“Hot enough for ya?”
“Whoo, I’ll say, and how about those Grizzlies?”
Now, of course, we’re all experts on weather, sports, politics, medicine, the environment — you name it and we can talk about it because we read it on the internets.
The thing is, unless we’re careful, we become mere extensions of our machines, not recognizing how much they are programming us as they inform us, seeding us with a flood of small-talk content that can divert us from more thoughtful connections with others. Or from thinking at all.
Our phones too easily become our default setting — the things we turn to when silence gets awkward, when our low threshold for boredom pops up, when the traffic light doesn’t change quickly. (I see you, Memphis.) Too often we don’t take the time to think of something original to say and just regurgitate the stuff that’s pushed into our consciousness from our phones.
For example: Does anyone really want to talk about Rosie O’Donnell? No, you do not. And yet, there she is, pixilating our screens, invading prime brain real estate, along with the clown who brought her name up out of the blue in the first place. Yes, it’s a diversion, but so is much of the other stuff we burble on about. It’s top of mind because we’re all getting fed the same kibble and it’s easier to just use the top of our mind.
It’s not all horrible, of course. And it’s human nature to want to share moments of our lives with others, to want to spread useful information, news, inspirational memes, and, yes, snarky cynicism to help ourselves cope with the bizarre and scary times in which we’re living. But we have to be aware of how we get played.
That’s why I give intentional thanks every time I go to the Old Forest in Overton Park. I’ve been wandering the trails for years, seldom missing a day, thanks to the persistence of my hounds and my own need to get away from the pernicious little machines that rule our lives if we let them.
I prefer the circuitous deep-woods paths, where mud lingers in the low spots and where splintered sunlight falls on moss-covered trunks, remnants of the ancient ones that towered over the forest a century ago. There’s something about encountering an 8-foot-high root-wad of a fallen red oak, embedded with stones that hadn’t seen daylight since World War I, that can make your morning more reflective. There’s something about standing under a massive tulip poplar and looking up at its distant crown, enmeshed in the thick canopy, and appreciating its deep and blessed shade. And on the rare occasions when one of those massive elders tumbles, it opens a gaping hole to the sky and lets the sun reach a forest floor where it hasn’t shone for decades. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to describe, a feeling that won’t fit on your little screen. You have to be there, you have to breathe it in. You have to unplug.
There’s a Zen saying by the Japanese poet and samurai, Mizuta Masahide that comes to mind: “Since my house burned down, I now have a better view of the rising moon.”
