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A growing problem: the obsession for escaping into “this instant”

Last week, I watched a video, captured by security cameras at a mall, showing a woman walking and reading and answering text messages in her cell phone. She is so focused on that task that she literally doesn’t see the huge water fountain in the middle of the mall. The video ends with the woman falling into the water.

The news anchor presenting the video made some remarks and the other anchors at the table laughed. However, I think that video is a good example of a growing problem: our obsession for escaping into “this instant.” That obsession disconnects us from our circumstances and from our past and from our future.

This is not a new problem. According to recent reports, several cities, including New York and Buenos Aires, are already planning new measures due to the increase in the number of pedestrian causing accidents because they cross the streets while texting and without paying attention to their surroundings. For those pedestrian, reading or writing a text message is more important than their own personal safety.

There is another situation, perhaps even more dangerous. It is the danger created for those behind the wheel who think that a busy highway is the best place to read and reply to text messages, regardless of the presence of other drivers.

Unfortunately, no new law will create a sudden desire to pay attention to what is around us and to who is around us. Laws will not diminish our obsession for “this instant,” because that obsession is created for the personal and societal frustration leading us to feel we shouldn’t be where we are, regardless of where we are.

Many people –I have seen it again and again– simply ignore the past and refuse to think about the future. They face such a challenging situation (real or imaginary) in the present that they escape emotionally and existentially to the only place they can control: the always disappearing instant.

Then, they try to give some meaning to that instant, pretending they are “communicating” with “friends,” even if they are just sending 140 characters or less to people they never met in person.

Escaping from reality and looking for refuge in “this instant” is being promoted and strengthen by all those commercials ceaselessly reminding us we are too fat, passive, and old to be part of this society, so we need to lose weight, grow new hair, and clean our skin.

Those are the same ads telling us not to pay attention to our bodies if, in the middle of the afternoon, we need a nap. A better alternative, they say, is to have an energy drink and keep working.

Once we accept we are too imperfect to be part of our society, because we lack beauty, money, and youth, we marginalize ourselves escaping to a vanishing instant where there are no traditions from the past or challenges for the future.

Such is our life: no roots and no goals, always escaping into “this instant.”

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