Taking our family's game up a notch
I've largely come to grips with the fact I can be a little overly dramatic. If you know me well enough to agree, the following email, drafted in a jet-lagged fog, that I sent to my family won't surprise you much.
I've been up most of the night reflecting on a variety of topics, ranging from a restructuring of my business to how many of Hannah's leftover birthday cupcakes I could eat before adult onset diabetes kicks in.
One key area that has been on my mind is the state of our family.
Individually, we bring remarkable strengths to the table, but I feel like we're fragmented relationally.
I step to the fore when it comes to responsibility for this situation.
We are all busy with our respective responsibilities (work, school, band, baseball, etc.) so it would be foolish to think we'd spend every hour of every day together.
However, I have noticed our shared propensity to scatter whenever we have a moment of downtime.
In the blink of an eye, we retreat behind our respective screens, be it a smart phone, garage TV, laptop, living room TV or ipad.
When I stayed home from concession stand duty and workout Monday night to reconnect w/my children, we all (and I stress ALL because I did it too), we sat together, but still played games on phones, looked at laptops, etc. Eventually, I passed out from jet lag and barely remember the remainder of the evening.
I am writing this to call us all out to a higher level of connectedness (which, oddly, is reduced by those electronics that supposedly connect us better.)
What does that look like? Let's figure that out together. For your consideration, I'd say it includes:
The sense I have is that we're tumbling down the rushing stream of our culture, over-busy, over-stimulated with media and overlooking the truly precious aspects of life which are core relationships. Those start with family and should extend outward to friends (I'm not advocating for a bunker mentality...)
Let me share a story with you that may give you insights into the urgency of this issue.
As you recall, when I landed in Uganda, my suitcase was missing. While we thought it had been lost by the airlines, it turns out a stranger had taken it from the luggage carousel and taken it to his hotel. A couple of brief cellphone conversations connected us and we ended up retrieving it from his hotel lobby, never meeting this seemingly absentminded Frenchman face-to-face.
I took the suitcase to my room at the guest house, took a quick look inside, saw nothing missing or rearranged, and went on my way with the week.
Sunday morning, halfway home, I was seated on a Boeing 777 jetliner on the tarmac at the Brussels airport, all the way at the back of the plane, feeling a little claustrophobic, looking at the tops of the heads of the 400-plus people crammed in there with me and feeling the rumble of the plane's massive turbo-fan engines through my seat.
Sitting there, already tired from travel, my mind kicked into overdrive, piecing together an imaginary but entirely probably sequence of events.
What if this mysterious individual had taken my bag on purpose and, in the hour or so he had it, concealed an explosive device within the lining that I had missed during my cursory inspection, and pressure-fused it to ignite with the second ascent to altitude (a typical sequence on many international trips)?
As I visualized the possibility, my heart raced, my breathing picked up speed and I was gripped with genuine fear that I was on the verge of a fall from 30,000 feet, surrounded by the flaming wreckage of a shattered jetliner and the frightened faces of my fellow passengers, including Mr. Beasley.
As I struggled to contain my physiological response to this mental image, I was struck, most of all, that the thing I would regret most was missing the rest of your/our lives.
The fact is, we don't know how much time we have left together. I don't say this to frighten anyone, but it's a simple reality of existence.
My question to us all is, will we continue to distract ourselves with mindless electronic entertainment? Or invest our time in things that matter?
Will we quibble over meaningless property, imagined slights and tiresome chores? Or embrace life and all its messiness, ready to risk some discomfort in pursuit of a richer existence? Will we waste even more of the time God gives us every day?
As the damn pater familias (and chief offender when it comes to mindless distraction), I am calling on our family to reframe our worldview, reset our expectations for life and renew our commitment to a richer, more connected existence.
Will you join me?
apb
I've been up most of the night reflecting on a variety of topics, ranging from a restructuring of my business to how many of Hannah's leftover birthday cupcakes I could eat before adult onset diabetes kicks in.
Individually, we bring remarkable strengths to the table, but I feel like we're fragmented relationally.
I step to the fore when it comes to responsibility for this situation.
We are all busy with our respective responsibilities (work, school, band, baseball, etc.) so it would be foolish to think we'd spend every hour of every day together.
However, I have noticed our shared propensity to scatter whenever we have a moment of downtime.
In the blink of an eye, we retreat behind our respective screens, be it a smart phone, garage TV, laptop, living room TV or ipad.
When I stayed home from concession stand duty and workout Monday night to reconnect w/my children, we all (and I stress ALL because I did it too), we sat together, but still played games on phones, looked at laptops, etc. Eventually, I passed out from jet lag and barely remember the remainder of the evening.
I am writing this to call us all out to a higher level of connectedness (which, oddly, is reduced by those electronics that supposedly connect us better.)
What does that look like? Let's figure that out together. For your consideration, I'd say it includes:
- Dinner together as many evenings as possible.
- Dad dates weekly
- Dad home from work by 5-5:30pm.
- Tighter restrictions on screen time.
- Stronger emphasis on quality content. (We're all talented writers and communicators, so let's be honest: is "Big Bang Theory" really worth our time? Does it reflect our shared values? Are there any characters in the shows/movies we watch we would honestly want to emulate?)
The sense I have is that we're tumbling down the rushing stream of our culture, over-busy, over-stimulated with media and overlooking the truly precious aspects of life which are core relationships. Those start with family and should extend outward to friends (I'm not advocating for a bunker mentality...)
Let me share a story with you that may give you insights into the urgency of this issue.
I took the suitcase to my room at the guest house, took a quick look inside, saw nothing missing or rearranged, and went on my way with the week.
Sitting there, already tired from travel, my mind kicked into overdrive, piecing together an imaginary but entirely probably sequence of events.
What if this mysterious individual had taken my bag on purpose and, in the hour or so he had it, concealed an explosive device within the lining that I had missed during my cursory inspection, and pressure-fused it to ignite with the second ascent to altitude (a typical sequence on many international trips)?
As I visualized the possibility, my heart raced, my breathing picked up speed and I was gripped with genuine fear that I was on the verge of a fall from 30,000 feet, surrounded by the flaming wreckage of a shattered jetliner and the frightened faces of my fellow passengers, including Mr. Beasley.
As I struggled to contain my physiological response to this mental image, I was struck, most of all, that the thing I would regret most was missing the rest of your/our lives.
The fact is, we don't know how much time we have left together. I don't say this to frighten anyone, but it's a simple reality of existence.
My question to us all is, will we continue to distract ourselves with mindless electronic entertainment? Or invest our time in things that matter?
Will we quibble over meaningless property, imagined slights and tiresome chores? Or embrace life and all its messiness, ready to risk some discomfort in pursuit of a richer existence? Will we waste even more of the time God gives us every day?
As the damn pater familias (and chief offender when it comes to mindless distraction), I am calling on our family to reframe our worldview, reset our expectations for life and renew our commitment to a richer, more connected existence.
Will you join me?
apb
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