Time for a change.

Remember what life was like before text messages and social networks? Well, I remember and it used to be glorious. My relationships used to be so different. When someone was interested in me and wanted to ask me out on a date, they actually had to build up the courage to call my house and most likely talk to someone in my family before they were able to get to me. We would then talk for hours about everything, since it was the only chance we had to actually talk to each other.  When the day, if the date came, I would be so nervous and excited. We would both be very present, talking and learning about each other, with no interruptions, no distractions, no third parties. It was just me and him. Those times were magical, and the dates I had during those years will forever hold a special place in my heart because we respected and valued our time together, and real relationships stemmed from it, relationships of far superior quality than whatever is it we call a relationship nowadays. Today everything has changed and I blame it all on our obsession with being social.

After text messaging, smart phones and social networks became indispensable to our lives, we let it consume us to the point the quality of our real relationships started taking a toll and the quality of our virtual relationships sky rocketed. Between text messages and social networks, we have all of our friends at our fingertips and they have us in their fingertips as well, thus making us all become much more available to anyone at anytime. Because of this, our “relationship etiquette” has completely changed from what it used to be. What once took guts for a boy to ask a girl out on a date, now has been reduced to  a simple text message that probably says, “hey, wanna hang?”, where no real emotions can be known or felt and we can easily reject someone as long as we put a smiley face at the end of it. What once was a date that we looked forward to all week and gave us butterflies, now has been reduced to two people sitting at a restaurant with their cell phones in front of them on top of the table, and at the slightest sounds/vibration/flashing light it emits, we will so very naturally leave the other person talking by themselves while we go about our own business in our phone. I’ve walked out on dates in the past because of their uncontrollable texting, and I have seen numerous relationships go down the drain because of social networking websites like MySpace and Facebook. Is it worth it to lose a relationship over our desire to maintain an intense social life?  If we become aware that this behavior is the probable culprit to why our relationships aren’t lasting as long as they used to, should we do something about it or should we simply accept that one on one time doesn’t exist anymore?

I think it all depends on what we want and what is important to each one of us. I don’t believe in extremes and I think we can always take the middle road to resolve a problem. By acknowledging that our obsession may be hurting our relationships we can then take the first step to fixing it, without having to choose one or the other. I believe we CAN have it all. We can have healthy relationships and an intense social life at the same time, as long as we learn how to modify our current behavior. When we are with someone we need to realize that all that matters in that moment is the person in front of you, the person that took time out of their lives to be with you; the person who is with you RIGHT NOW. Not the person who is calling you (unless it is your mother) or the person texting you, or the person writing to you on Facebook.

We need to start valuing each moment in our lives and understand that the beauty of a text is that it can wait until later! The beauty of a phone call is that we can hit ignore! It can all wait, it can wait until you are done having dinner with your date, it can wait until you go to the bathroom; it can wait until your date goes to the bathroom. IT.CAN.WAIT! 

I can’t change the people around me, or tell someone what to do, but I can start with me, and you start with you. Let’s begin by controlling the urgency of being available to anyone at anytime and focusing on being present and fully enjoying what is happening around you right NOW.