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Just Sit There and Be a Person
Just Sit There and Be a Person
I can’t recommend Louis C.K.’s comedy, but he gave an insightful answer to Conan O’Brien about why he won’t let his young daughters have phones. “You need the ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away. The ability to just sit there. That’s just being a person…because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty, forever empty. That knowledge that it’s all for nothing and you’re alone. [Obviously Christians don’t feel this to the same extent, but we all feel the emptiness and sadness of living in a sin cursed world apart from our Lord, a feeling well reflected in Ecclesiastes. B.M.]. It’s down there. And sometimes when things clear away and you’re not watching and you’re in your car and you start going, ‘Ohh, here it comes that I’m alone,’ like it starts to visit on you just like this sadness. That’s why we text and drive. Pretty much 100 percent of people driving are texting. And they’re killing and murdering each other with their cars. But people are willing to risk taking their life and ruining another because they don’t want to be alone for a second…
I was alone in my car and it made me feel really sad and so I went, ‘Okay, I’m getting really sad,’ so I had to get my phone and write, ‘Hi,’ to, like, fifty people…Anyway, I started to get that sad feeling and reached for the phone and then I said, ‘You know what; don’t. Just be sad. Just stand in the way of it and let it hit you like a truck.” So I pulled over and cried like a baby. I cried so much and it was beautiful…sadness is poetic…you are lucky to live sad moments. And then I had happy feelings because when you let yourself have sad feelings your body has antibodies that come rushing in to meet the sad feelings. But because we don’t want that first feeling of sad, we push it away with our phones. So you never feel completely happy or completely sad. You just feel kind of satisfied with your products. And then…you die. So that’s why I don’t want to get a phone for my kids.” (Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. Sherry Turkle. p. 59-60)
Louis C.K. puts a dark comedic spin on it, but underneath is a great truth. Smartphones hinder our ability to just sit there and be a person, feeling all of our feelings like the Psalmists. “Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life.” (Psalm 69:1). Wrestling with the hard realities of life like Solomon in Ecclesiastes. “All is vanity and striving after wind.” (Ecc. 1:14). Being alone with God like Jesus in secluded places. “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.” (Luke 5:16). It’s not texting, posting, or “liking” that makes us fully alive. It’s the precious solitude of sitting there and being a person.
