So last week I was at home surfing the web at the latest phones coming out and a random video caught my eye. It was some video about a dog that hasn’t seen his owner since he left to Iraq. The dog runs to his owner, starts crying, and begins jumping all over him. It was incredible.
Then that led me to click on another one of these two huskies doing it…well you know what happens next…soon enough I start clicking on all of these videos about reunions from soldiers who left. Next thing I know, I end up clicking on videos about wedding proposals and the clever ways that they have been done- so touching. So very touching.
So yeah…two hours later, the combination of extreme dehydration, wadded up toilet paper, and butt sores from sitting on the couch for that long, broke me out of my stupor.
“What the hell?!?! I was looking at the new Note 3 and here I am instead having mascara running down my face?” (let’s not get into the mascara thing here)
In that moment I couldn’t help realize how moved I was.
Why do people end up sitting and watching those things? I believe it’s because they want to see the reaction of the person…they want to feel the experience…they want to be moved. You want to be moved.
I believe this is a deep yearning that we all want that unfortunately many people just don’t experience anymore. They don’t know what it is to be surprised anymore. They don’t know what it is to experience rather than just exist. They don’t know what it’s like to feel something so deep that it shakes their small world and tosses them off their feet. This is why I feel we perv out and kill time watching these things…when we have trouble finding these moments in our own life, these videos are our form of mental masturbation. Our way to get our fix without even knowing it.
We are so caught up in the digital social scheme of things that we have lost the connection to the deeper experiences of life.
It’s so much easier to rely on the facebook, twitter, and the pinterest to put ourselves into because it’s safer. It’s much safer to put things there and not face the people in person. They protect us…that’s the problem with those things. They cover you so well that they rob you of real experience and connection. They starve you from others. They are your mask.
When we lose the ability to be surprised…lose the ability to connect deeper…lose the ability to experience rather than just exist…the world is small. It is a place that lacks color and feels closed. It becomes tired. You become tired. You become bored and uninterested. That’s when you end up substituting… sex… cars… clothes… drugs… these things end up becoming your way to protect and entertain yourself.
When you begin to turn your dial, take off the masks, open yourself, you will begin to experience things in ways deeper. You will notice that no longer do you care for the “objects” or the destination…you will care about the experience and meaning of it.
Sex becomes a means to experience a different level of love
Cars become a means to see new ______________
Clothes act as expression rather than social fashion
Drugs will become suffocating to your life
You see, in this way…the world is no longer closed, the world is no longer small. The world becomes a playground. A place where a bologna sandwich can taste like grade school and conversations don’t have to exist on a website. That is experience…that is living…that is open.
By the way...please tell me I'm not the only one who has ever killed time watching those kinds of youtube videos. Come on...anyone else?