True Communication

I received some good news this morning.  My parents, who live in North Carolina, are planning on coming for Thanksgiving.  The good news is that they're coming an extra day early now!  They'll be here in just a few short days.  I'm so happy about this.  I love my parents very much and I miss them quite a lot.  Being far away is hard, but we do get to visit a few times a year.  Yet now there is more excitement in spending time with my family, which is that they get to spend time with my daughter.
If you have children, you know how much they grow.  And you know how FAST they grow.  So to know that my family is missing out on those sweet days is sad for me.  And I know it is sad for them too.

Thankfully, we have some great ways to keep in touch these days, thanks to technology.  Skype, phone calls, the ability to snap pictures and instantly send them to others for real time updates.  These things are fantastic to keep us together and help us stay close.

But then... you have to wonder....

Does it make us more distant, in some ways?  Do we not value our time together as much?

My parents met in college and were friends for a year or two, and really only started to date just before the summer of my mother's sophomore year.  My father, who was two years older, graduated and moved north - graduate school in Canada.  My mother transferred and finished her last two years of school at Florida State in Tallahassee.

Everyday, for two years, my parents wrote each other letters.  Hand written, with time set aside out of their days to dedicate to this person.  They couldn't call much because of the expense to call across so many lines and a national border.  They saw each other only for a few trips.  But their letters were beautiful.  Honest, loving, and at times almost boring with the mundane details of a day that had little significance. But still they wrote.  They wrote to include one another in their daily lives, even from a distance and even if the information would arrive a few days late.

It is no surprise that we are losing the art of genuine communication. Go to a restaurant and look around - you'll spot more than one table where no one is looking at the other people, but instead at their phones.  Young people who have grown up in the texting generation show poor aptitude for grammar and proper syntax.  Many don't even know that there are supposed to be two spaces after a period, because a phone requires only one.

We also don't know how to look each other in the eye anymore.  We'd rather relegate uncomfortable conversations to distant vehicles - an email to end a relationship, a letter to remove someone from a job position.  Uncomfortable silences are almost unbearable now, and we turn to a distraction quickly.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a total technology junkie.  But I know its place, and I know that it does not, nor should it ever, stand in for real human interaction.

So let's all take a moment today and PUT DOWN THE CELL PHONES, and have a genuine, honest conversation with someone we care about.  And when you next see your loved ones, give them a big ol' hug, because there's no technological subsitute for touch.  :)