Sit a Spell and Disconnect

I sat for just to spell without my phone in hand. It’s nice to be untethered to an electronic appendage. The weekend provided glorious proof that Mother Nature favors North Carolina. Nothing beats our autumn. Mother Nature flaunted her fall colors as a peacock might in mating season.

There was the warmth of the sun cut ever so slightly by the chill of a whispery breeze. Leaves crunched underfoot with the satisfying crack of acorns every so often. In the air lingered the smoky ash of porch fires shared with friends. I heard the sounds of dusk settling in. There was silence and the din of nature all at once. The silence was peppered by shouts of teenagers screaming from a nearby football field and my own children frolicking in the yard. The park in front of our house was transformed to Mother Nature’s catwalk. Her runway show didn’t disappoint.

It was the first time in a long while I recall using all of my senses, except for taste of course. I did not lick the trees or anything. I was what some might call present, I suppose. Sometimes we all need a mental Etch-a-Sketch shake to clear our souls. It’s liberating to be disconnected, no screen beckoning me, no flash to react to or pings and rings to interrupt my thoughts. Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but the antidote to fear of missing out might just be to unplug.

It’s rare for us to take the time to just sit a spell. It’s the stuff of front porches and porch swings, a bygone era in both mindset and architecture as we see the proliferation of back decks and the demise of front porches. We’ve lost the act of just being, feeling, and so on. We mistake these stolen moments as laziness, always feeling the tug to be doing something, being productive, slashing lines through our to-do lists. It’s a sad state of things that we view taking time to be present as a luxury.

My world, for even a short while, was empty of distraction yet full of so much more.