I ran into a friend today in a local coffee shop. She is a successful chiropractor in town and I was surprised to see her out and about, and looking like she just came from a yoga class, on this mid-Thursday afternoon. I asked about one of our mutual friends, "Have you spoken with Chris lately?"
"We don't have enough time," she said. It was almost as if she was responding to another question. But she was looking right at me. I knew exactly what she meant.
Neither of us had heard from our friend in some time. We talked about talking about them with others as well. But we didn't have any first hand information.
"I am friends with their kids on Facebook, so that's fun," I said. "But I haven't been able to connect with him."
"I know," she said.
Now maybe she was in a different mental geo-location, but I think she was speaking directly to me. As if she understood the existential problem with my life too. And of course, she didn't, HECK I don't, really. But we connected on the fact that even the two of us, in RT (real-time) in the RW (real-world) were not really being given enough time to connect. She was off to somewhere, I was off to check-in with work via email (my initial reason for the coffee shop stop).
And we were *like* two ships passing in the night, except we were actually not passing, we were touching. And still there was so little time to say things we wanted to say. We understood that we were out of time and the abbreviated conversation that was available to us was enough.
She hugged me and went on to her next "thing" and I plugged in and checked my meeting requests. And an hour later, something she said, stuck with me, like a barb.
"It's like it's even hard to keep up with each other using all this stuff, blogs and facebook and emails. All this 'online' stuff. It's just too much. Makes me want to pull up roots, pull out the plug and move to the mountains." She was heading to the mountains of Colorado for two weeks during the summer.
"That will be nice," I said. "Unplugging."
"Yes," she said. "And plugging in to nature and the kids."
I'd like that too. I'll have to look into that one, for me and my family.
@jmacofearth
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Tags: about friends, checking in, disconnecting, during the summer, for me and my family, hard to keep up, heading to the mountains, in realtime, not enough time, paying attention, plugging into nature, unplug, unplugging, what's important
