All We Have is Now
- rootsfarmschool
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Life in the past five years has been a flurry of celebrations and changes. We went from all three of our kids at home, to two marriages, four grandchildren (with a fifth on the way), a graduation and now an empty nest. Our days are quiet and our cupboards are full of clean dishes. It truly happened that fast.
Time and Health are life's most precious commodities. Many are fooled to think it is material wealth. You can have all of the money in the world, but if you don't have your health or loved ones to share it with, what value is there in any of it? Who better to share it with than our children? It is said that seventy-five percent of the time we will ever spend with our children occurs before the age of 12! That small window of time is precious and critical to their development. After that, we become less and less relevant in their lives.
Why am I sharing this with you? Once you become a grandparent, you gain a greater sense of appreciation for all of those tender moments with children. Not that parents cannot appreciate those times, but overall you're just plain tired! Running a household and/or a career is a marathon not for the faint of heart.
Now imagine there exists a quiet adversary that stealthily steals your and your children's time and health. It is always with you, always within reach. It's appetite for our attention and time is never satisfied. We and our children disappear into this virtual world where we seldomly connect. We suffer from anxiety or fear of missing out, an actual psychological term (FOMO). We're physically present but mentally and emotionally vacant.
The physical, mental, and emotional health of our children is at stake. Extended time on interactive devices is changing the way their brains develop. Research shows that they are losing blood flow to the frontal cortex or thinking part of the brain. On top of that, the cases for myopia or nearsightedness, depression, anxiety, and suicide is on the rise due to excessive screen use. Many parents are wisely choosing to delay cell phone use until their children are 16 years of age.
One interesting film I enjoyed watching was the movie Inception. This Sci-fi movie deals with dreams and the subconscious mind. In the film, the characters enter and exit dreams and sometimes need a jolt or sensation to wake them up should the dream become dangerous. If there was ever a time that all of us needed a jolt, it is now! For our health, for our children's health, now is the time to change our habits. We must wake from as Bo Burnham put it, "this virtual hell scape," and claim our lives back and the lives of our children.
Chat GBT may have produced a cleaner and more eloquent blogpost, but I refuse to use these tools in fear that I may lose my ability to write. We use to memorize phone numbers, now we don't need to, and have lost the capacity to do so. Charlotte Mason stated over 100 years ago that if we allow someone or something to do the choosing for us, it makes us weaker.
In so far as we have chosen for another, we have done that other person an injury. We have taken away a chance from him or her of fulfilling the chief function of life, that of choosing.…we dress our persons in ready-made garments and our minds in ready- made opinions; because so far as we do so, we lose the chance of using our Will; we act as an automaton and not a person. Every such exercise of choice makes personality the stronger; while it grows the weaker for every choice we shirk.
-Charlotte Mason, Ourselves
A few weeks ago, I shared a short video for our parents in hope that they too would feel the jolt I did to wake up and begin living. The first part of the video is not recommended for children as it highlights some of the garbage out there that has access to our kids. The rest emphasizes the harm of excessive use of devices for ourselves and our children. Two books I highly recommend are Glow Kids by Dr. Nicholas Kardaras
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.
Our time is limited and our overall physical and mental health is in peril. We owe it to our children to protect their minds and well-being. In wanting to give them everything we didn't have, we've traded what we had, for a less meaningful everything.
You can view the video here:
The Great Disconnect
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