The most important thing in life

Dear reader,

the other day I went shopping and stopped shortly when I saw that a woman was deeply absorbed with her smartphone and walking right towards me, apparently without seeing me. I said nothing and just stood there. Only when she almost collided with me, did she look up shocked, said sorry and walked past me.

Several years ago one of my aunts (actually great aunt) was visiting us. Nothing against my aunt, I like her. But she was regularly phoning someone on her mobile and writing SMS to others or was on the internet writing emails to others. That went so far that my mother, who otherwise was really patient with others, once told her to put away the phone, please. Said a sixty-something to her 80-years old aunt! That was quite something!

I once heard of a group of Asian people, who reportedly went in a museum with a video camera recording everything. I assume it was to have a look at the art „in peace“ at home or in a hotel later? But who knows if that story is actually true... Hopefully not! Maybe it was just a photo camera. I'm not sure if museums would allow video cameras for security reasons.

On the train there are a lot of people busy with their smartphones. When somebody was sitting next to me, I was looking at what the person was doing. Some chatted, many were playing. Mostly something like Tetris where bricks where coming down and had to be put in certain order at the bottom or some balls were coming from above and had to be shot with a sort of „gun“. So all in all games, which are solely there to kill time. Nothing against those sort of games or people, who play them...

I'm member of a forum where someone has a signature under each of his entries. I found out now where that line is from, namely „Fast & Furious 5“. A character there says, “But the most important thing in life will always be the people in this room. Right here. Right now.“ I like that quote and I can understand that someone would choose it for their signature. I don't know the movie and I'm not sure how it was meant in the scene. But I like the thought that the most important thing in life are the person around me at that moment or the persons I'm with. The screen-society so to say, which is currently existing, where many people only scare on their screen and sometimes even walk into others, because they don't notice their surroundings anymore, I find that very sad.

The other day I came across an article online. A 14-years old girl was injured after she had crossed a street starring at her smartphone, busy installing updates, when she didn't see a car coming. It was only said that the girl had been injured, not how much. Luckily the girl was only injured and at least the car driver had paid attention.

The doctor and psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffman published a collection of stories in 1845 under the title „Struwelpeter“, one of them is “The Story of Johnny Head-in-Air” (German: “Hans Guck-in-die-Luft), a boy, who's so busy looking up in the air in stead of anywhere else, that he first runs over a dog and then, to the entertainment of the fish, he falls into the river, including his writing-book, which is then lost. Maybe the story is exaggerated and fictional, but on principle, it doesn't seem that unrealistic at all.

My mother sent me a picture once, which she had received from somebody else. The question underneath it read something like, “What is he doing there?”

Here is the picture:

(source: http://i.imgur.com/oHuAH.jpg)

Until next blog,
sarah