78 Marbles
I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.
Albert Einstein
I went to the wine store today and I noticed that I wasn’t remotely present for the transaction with the cashier. I was thinking of all the things I had yet to do (I was having friends for dinner). When I left the store, I was aware that the cashier could have been a machine, for all the consideration that I had given her.
Then I went for a run around the seawall. As I was running, I remembered how twenty years ago when I lived in a prairie city, you wouldn’t think of passing someone on a trail without waving, smiling, or greeting them in some way. When I moved back home to Vancouver, I noticed that most people avoided the same kind of connection. Today I decided to make a point to smile or nod at every person I passed. Sure, some of them resisted eye contact but many of the smiles I received gave me an extra boost of energy.
At the restaurant where I work, I make a point of making eye contact with my customers. When a customer is on their cellphone, I wait until they are off the phone before I try to make contact. Similarly, if someone calls my phone while I’m in line at a cashier’s desk, I don’t answer so that I’m not simultaneously talking into my cellphone whilst talking to the teller. I try not to be part of the generation of idiots, but I still notice that there are many instances in which I could be more present with the people that populate my day.
There’s a woman who takes this idea of human interaction to an art form. In Marble 333, I told how when Ex-man left, I switched from the grocery megastores that I dreaded to a small, locally owned market. There’s a woman named Carmen Louie who works at this market and who knows over 7,000 customers’ names. It’s amazing to see how she brings joy to people’s day just by greeting them by name and asking about their kids/family. I once asked her how she did it and she told me that she writes down the names with memory cues in a notebook then she studies the names every week so she won’t forget them. This is the antithesis of the megastore experience of mass merchandising and anonymity.
What I’m noticing is that the more technological ways there are to connect to people (Facebook, email, messaging, etc.) the more I have to consciously commit to connect when a real person is in front of me. This is not to say that social media is wrong, just that there are pitfalls to relying on it as a substitute for interacting in real time, in real life.
Is there an area in your life where you could apply the Carmen Louie philosophy?
I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.
Albert Einstein
I went to the wine store today and I noticed that I wasn’t remotely present for the transaction with the cashier. I was thinking of all the things I had yet to do (I was having friends for dinner). When I left the store, I was aware that the cashier could have been a machine, for all the consideration that I had given her.
Then I went for a run around the seawall. As I was running, I remembered how twenty years ago when I lived in a prairie city, you wouldn’t think of passing someone on a trail without waving, smiling, or greeting them in some way. When I moved back home to Vancouver, I noticed that most people avoided the same kind of connection. Today I decided to make a point to smile or nod at every person I passed. Sure, some of them resisted eye contact but many of the smiles I received gave me an extra boost of energy.
At the restaurant where I work, I make a point of making eye contact with my customers. When a customer is on their cellphone, I wait until they are off the phone before I try to make contact. Similarly, if someone calls my phone while I’m in line at a cashier’s desk, I don’t answer so that I’m not simultaneously talking into my cellphone whilst talking to the teller. I try not to be part of the generation of idiots, but I still notice that there are many instances in which I could be more present with the people that populate my day.
There’s a woman who takes this idea of human interaction to an art form. In Marble 333, I told how when Ex-man left, I switched from the grocery megastores that I dreaded to a small, locally owned market. There’s a woman named Carmen Louie who works at this market and who knows over 7,000 customers’ names. It’s amazing to see how she brings joy to people’s day just by greeting them by name and asking about their kids/family. I once asked her how she did it and she told me that she writes down the names with memory cues in a notebook then she studies the names every week so she won’t forget them. This is the antithesis of the megastore experience of mass merchandising and anonymity.
What I’m noticing is that the more technological ways there are to connect to people (Facebook, email, messaging, etc.) the more I have to consciously commit to connect when a real person is in front of me. This is not to say that social media is wrong, just that there are pitfalls to relying on it as a substitute for interacting in real time, in real life.
Is there an area in your life where you could apply the Carmen Louie philosophy?
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