Heads down!

Every day, I have the opportunity to walk across a small college campus to my workplace. It is a lovely campus, layed out around a long mall, lined with big hardwood trees and nicely landscaped, the flowers changed seasonally and the wide expanses of grass kept neatly mowed.

During class change, the area is alive with students, heading back to their dorms or over to get something to eat, or to wherever college students go between and after class gets out.

I remember my college days on campus, greeting friends, playing frizbee, hanging out, laughing and talking, meeting new people, experiencing so many exciting and new events. It seems to be fairly similar, and not much has changed over the years, except for one phenomenom that I have noticed: these days, most kids walk across campus with their heads down, both hands on their cell phone or ipod, completely focused on whatever hand held device they happen to be using at that moment, completely missing whatever is going on around them in the world outside that small, amazing technological piece of plastic. Their ears are plugged up with earphones and those wondrous cries of the cardinals go completely unnoticed.

Of course, not all students are using electronic devises as they walk across campus, but recently I decided to just pay attention, see how many actually are walking around, heads down, rapidly pushing the tiny buttons in this new form of communication, and I was amazed at how many there were: some walking in groups but without any interaction with the people they were actually walking with, many solo, not looking up at all, shoulders hunched over, complete focus on the tiny screen of the new language of texting.

I walk by many students that I know, without any smile or greeting or realization that I walked by them. Sometimes, when they are in the line for food, I mistakenly think they are talking to me and respond, only to realize that they are talking with someone in some other location, and feel rather silly at the realization of this.

One young womann I work with came to work one day with her Ipod securely lashed to her belt, earphones securely plugged into her ears. I greeted her, but she did not hear me. I had to tap her shoulder and I politely asked her to remove her Ipod while she was at work. She smiled at me, but it was clear that she had no idea what I had just said. When she finally did remove the earphones, she seemed miffed that I asked her to remove her Ipod while at work. "I can hear you just fine", she said, and refused to turn off the device, replacing the one earphone that she had grudgingly removed to have a conversation with me. She turned her back and went on listening to the music that even I could hear faintly from a few feet away.

What type of world is being created here? A virtual world where nothing is real, where the natural environment can be tuned out forever? How can we hear the voice of God if our ears are plugged with earphones and the music is so loud?

Will the songs of the birds cease to exist if there is no one to listen to them?