The Lost Art of Thoughtfulness
We live in a reactive world. All you have to do is drive for 10 minutes to see it. Someone barely steps out of line and other cars are honking, tailing them, or worse. I sometimes wonder, are these people who are screaming out their windows all perfect drivers? I am certainly not. On social media people spout off quickly, answering each other in angry retorts they would never say to someone’s face. We see a text on our phone and we feel an immediate pull to answer it. Our kids or our coworkers do something that irritates us and we snap at them, justifying ourselves with what they did first. We react. I’m sure to a certain extent we humans have always been this way. A result of the fall and sin, that we are too quick to react and therefore say and do things we should not. But it certainly seems to be getting worse, significantly worse.
Oxford Languages defines reactive as “acting in response to a situation rather than creating or controlling it.” I’m the first to admit that we can’t always create or control our situations, but here is the issue, we aren’t thoughtful about them either. When a situation or issue arises, I find more and more that thoughtfulness is a rarity. We seem to assume that we already know everything about a situation, about the people involved, and about what the situation requires. We rarely ask questions, take space, or reassess our own assumptions. We react, without much time or thought. We spout off in word or deed and then turn and go on our way, hardly looking back. What time is there to second guess or think ahead of time?
The current world we live in is moving at an incredible pace and we are expected to do the same. Never have there been so many amenities in our lives to make things easier and more convenient and yet, we have less time than ever. Most of us run at such a fast pace that we can barely keep up – like someone has turned the treadmill up on high speed and we’re just trying not to fall off. No wonder we’re reactive, no wonder we aren’t thoughtful, who has time to think?
On top of the natural pace of our world, there is another thing that is stealing out ability to be thoughtful. You probably already know what I’m going to say, and you are dreading it—yes, it’s our smartphones. With the constant hits of dopamine through social media and texts, there has never been a world more focused on instant gratification. “The short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works.” Charmath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook expressing remorse at his role in exploiting consumer behavior. If we are honest, we know that most of us are addicts when it comes to our phones. I mean we know it can kill us to read a text or try to text while we drive and yet we are tempted to do it anyway. I’m quite aware that scrolling through facebook or being distracted by a text that has come in is taking away from my family and making me feel more frazzled and yet I have a hard time stopping myself. It takes serious discipline and will power to ignore our phones. It is really not any different than the difficulty of not eating your favorite treat when it’s sitting there right in front of you.
And yet, we know that these things are changing our brains. They are changing the way we interact and communicate with each other. They are making us more reactive and less thoughtful. Everything is done in the moment. There is little time or space for thought. But that’s exactly what thoughtfulness requires, time and space. If I am going to be thoughtful about an issue, an idea, or a situation, I need time and space. Time where I’m not reading or scrolling on my phone. Time where I’m not dealing with a different issue or clouding my mind with other noise. Time where I can process and think through the issue or situation at hand.
Thoughtfulness is a lost art. This applies to how we deal with others and it also just applies to ideas and knowledge. I rarely see people who disagree having a thoughtful conversation anymore. Most people just want to stand up and shout their opinions on social media or bully others into agreeing with them. Where are the “pub chats” of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis? Where is the exchange of differing opinions and ideas? This kind of communication grows us, it changes us, it makes us better. As individuals but also as a society. When we have a thoughtful conversation with another person it helps us to see a situation from a different perspective, it helps us to process information we hadn’t considered before. Where are these thoughtful conversations and reflections?
Thoughtfulness requires time and space. We need to slow down, put down our phones, and see the humanness in those around us. God made all peoples in his image. The one who uses language you don’t like, the one who is on the other side of the political spectrum, the one who rubs you the wrong way, the one who looks different from you, talks differently from you and acts differently from you. All peoples. The people around us have something to teach us, they have something to contribute. The diversity of peoples is about more than the color of their skin. The beauty of diversity is in perspectives and ideas and backgrounds and thoughts.
I want to be more thoughtful. I want to spend more time with a book in my hands and less time with my phone. I want to have more face to face conversations and spend less time looking at what people post online. I want to walk through the woods and look around in wonder and come away with questions and ideas. Thoughtfulness requires this kind of time and space. I want to have the posture of a learner, to look at situations from a perspective of humble curiosity and not conclusion. I want to question my assumptions about others and about the world around me. But in order to do this, I must stop letting the world dictate my pace. I must stop letting the dopamine hits of social media and my phone make me an addict. I must make time and space for thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness is a lost art, but perhaps there is still hope to recapture it.
