I was riding the bus when a boy no longer amused with his video game chucked it aside and started digging through a tote. He wailed his displeasure when all he produced was a half eaten pack of crackers and some hand wipes––his digital needs remained unsatisfied.

At his age, my brothers and I were swaddled in fluff and kicked out the back door with nothing but our imaginations, five miles of wilderness, and whatever the cat dropped on the doorstep. Entertainment was entirely dependent on creative cunning. We spent our days galloping through the underbrush, building mud mansions and catching salamanders to live inside them. We once amused ourselves for three days straight just digging a big hole.

At at what point along the way did we stop being comfortable inside our own heads? In the digital age, people have become too impatient to actually sit back, relax, and enjoy the solitude of an uncharted moment.

Today, immediacy rules every sphere of human interaction. We want to know it, we want to know it now, and we want to move on. The world is at our fingertips every second of every day and as a result, some of the greatest opportunities to commune with a moment pass by unappreciated.

It’s convenient to wake up and check my emails, text, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook all  before  getting out of bed, but sometimes I need to leave the smartphone at home and reconnect with raw reality––the kind you can see, smell, taste, touch and love.