Sense and Sensibility

Ping. It is the one sound that has become a constant in our lives. Wherever we live, whatever we do and whoever we are, we are surrounded by an ocean of ‘pings’. In an important meeting. Ping. Dressed and out for dinner. Ping. In flight and almost taking off. Sure enough, Ping! The pings, beeps, texts and notifications have taken over our lives and toppled our attention spans like never before. Psychologists and neurologists are issuing warnings. There are ‘Ted Talks’ on how this constant to and fro of the mind, this continuous and non-stop juggling and flitting from one screen window to another, from one message to another, is altering our very neurological framework. Some experts even refer to it as an epidemic. While the jury may still be out on the academic angle to it all, we’re all experiencing attention deficit only too well.

It isn’t that we don’t know that all these pings and the associated pongs are affecting our level of concentration or attention. Or even at its most benign, are a nuisance and interference in the middle of a conversation, an activity or even a thought. As I am trying to write this column, my mobile phone, which is of course only an arm’s length away, has vibrated multiple times. Yes, it is on mute, so strictly speaking it has not pinged. But knowing that there are messages on it, waiting to be seen, makes me want to reach out and quickly check them. I’m quite certain none of the messages - pings or texts or otherwise - are likely to be so vital that they need to be checked or responded to immediately. Another update on a global headline or some inane emoji response to a text doesn’t need my immediate attention. But such is the distraction and pull of those pings that they manage to keep commanding our attention. Again and again.

We are living in an era where the ‘now’ has been reduced to right now, instantaneous, instant and immediate. One of the biggest casualties in all of this is our level of patience and attention, both of which seem to have hit rock bottom. But are there remedial measures to this quiet menace? Putting your phone away in a different room or place isn’t quite a solution. Because then, a part of your mind is focused on its ongoings and that is hardly any help. Instead, the answer must come from learning to co-exist with all the screens, yours and everyone else’s and yet learning how not to allow your concentration to get derailed by them. If it is possible for us to react or respond to every ping, it must be equally likely to deliberately ignore looking at them or checking them immediately, particularly if they are getting in the way of something that we are trying to achieve.

Speaking of casualties, patience and attention aren’t the only ones. At a live concert, we miss out on the subtlest and finest expressions of the artist because we are too busy trying to capture it on camera. On holidays and while travelling, we fail to really absorb the energy of a place because we are too busy checking our buzzing WhatsApps or fail to properly comprehend the enormity of a headline because there have been five other pings before it and 50 are sure to follow. The examples are endless and are as daily and routine as they get.

Quite ironically, it is in our constant quest to capture moments that we are failing to live them.

Author Supriya Newar may be reached at connect@supriyanewar.com, Instagram: @supriyanewar, Facebook: supriya.newar and LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/supriya-newar