Losing Touch with A Good Friend

By David Glenn Cox

I recently came across an interview where Ben Stiller interviewed the eighty-eight-year-old actor Mickey Rooney. Stiller was trying to teach Rooney about Twitter and how to tweet. He explained to Rooney how with Twitter he had immediate access to the Internet and messaging. Rooney smiled and listened attentively as Stiller showed him a message on his twitter. “Oldest daughter shaved her legs for the first time today.”

Rooney, still smiling, asked, “That’s entertaining for you?” He asked sincerely and without condescension and then added, “It doesn’t seem like very wholesome entertainment.” Maybe it was Rooney’s tone or his inflection because I understood what he was trying to say. He wasn’t trying to be a prude; he was saying that this was an empty form of entertainment.

The more I thought about it the more I agreed. I don’t run much anymore, but when I used to I would see people running with walkmen and I-pods and I would think to myself that they’re missing the best part, the sounds of their footsteps on the pavement. Listening to sound of your breathing and to your heartbeat pounding in your ears, the sounds of the birds, and most importantly listening to your body and to your mind. To be a good runner you must be able to tell your inner child to shut up when he or she complains that you are hot or you are tired. You instead channel a feeling of strength and vigor when you realize that the voice telling you to stop is indeed a child.

You learn to differentiate between real tiredness and childish tiredness. Your body is in tune with your mind so you can tell the difference between a minor pain and a major pain. For me it was like yoga, and I looked forward every day to thirty or forty minutes of solitude and listening to my mind.

I see so many people texting and talking constantly on their cell phones and I wonder, when do they talk to themselves and when do they listen to themselves? I have been on bus trips and train trips where I have thoroughly entertained myself just by looking out the window and enjoying the sights. I have looked out aircraft windows at a remote houses and wondered, what is that like to live so far away from everything? What must their life be like? Are they prosperous? Would they leave there if they got the chance?

On many a summer afternoon I have hashed out the problems of the world with myself while pushing a lawnmower around the yard. I have wondered if I had a time machine who would I want to meet first? Jesus perhaps? Well, I don’t speak Aramaic and I don’t know exactly where I’d find him. So, if I had this time machine would it be possible to stay for days and weeks at a time? What about clothes and customs; where would I sleep and how would I get money?

Perhaps Abe Lincoln would be my target, but being the President would I be able to speak to him? I could go to Springfield or New Salem but would that be the Lincoln I really wanted to meet? If I were to go to Philadelphia on July 1st 1776, I bet I could meet Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin but would they give me the time of day? Would they ask about my funny clothes and accent or would they recoil from me when I explained to them that I was from the future?

So then I began to think what would I do if I was confronted by someone who claimed to be from the future? Would I, too, recoil? Would I want to know what was going to happen in the future? The mercenary me would grab a pad and pencil and request the World Series winners and best stocks to buy. My reflective side would worry and fear to ask many questions too frightening to know the answers to beforehand. I wonder if that is not the reason that we face the future day by day. Perhaps it is all the future that we, as human beings, can handle?

A mindless task on a hot summer day or an interminable trip would become a paradise where my mind could roam free from distractions. Free to go where it will with no limits placed upon it, until the phone rings. “Are you almost home? Do you want chicken or hamburgers for supper tonight?”

In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” the speed limit was set at ninety miles an hour on the highways. The government did not want you to look out the window; they did not want you to see what was going on around you. At ninety miles per hour you had to focus on the traffic and driving. Perhaps Huxley was correct and only chose the wrong vehicle of distraction.

When we sleep at night the massive, most powerful computer in the world, the one inside our heads, refiles and refreshes the information stored in our brains. Our subconscious is given free rein to run naked through the Garden of Eden or to fight dinosaurs with a butter knife. We can play croquet with Napoleon or guitar with Paul McCartney. When we compare our conscious mind with its nighttime operator, it all appears to be sheer madness. The most horrible experiences we ever face in life we compare to our nightmares generated by our own subconscious.

There is a level of internal communication that goes on inside our subconscious minds to keep us sane, so mustn’t there be some level of communication needed on the conscious side of the coin as well? Between work and home and a million other distractions what is being eliminated is our communication with ourselves. We trade moments of reflective thought to find out that “Oldest daughter shaved her legs for the first time today.” Or Sarah Palin is suspected of having a boob job. Is that a good trade?

I ask, like Rooney, not in condescension but as an honest question, don’t you like spending time with yourself? If Isaac Newton had been twittering or texting under that tree when the apple hit him on the head would he have contemplated the implications of that event or would he have tweeted, “Shit! A damn apple just hit me on the head!” Nikola Tesla said the inspiration for the AC motor came to him while he was walking alone, and he drew his first design with a stick in the dirt. What are we gaining and what are we losing in this technological time transfer? The ability to talk to everyone instantly while losing the ability to be alone with our thoughts privately.