In the age of sleepless digital presence, I yearn for the simplicities of human touch.

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I was struck by this post from Humans of New York. Her words echoed in my mind: “Because wanting to be independent doesn’t mean I want to be alone.”

In our current state of “always connectedness”, we are lonelier than ever before. The mind is designed to engage with the world^_[1]. When given a state of “disengaged mind”, where we are able to be with just our thoughts and nothing else, some people chose to receive mild electric shock than be with their own mind.


We are social creatures, hardwired to survive in groups and go into depression after being alone for a certain amount of time^_[2]. We are lonelier than ever in this digital age and loneliness is now regarded to be as deadly as other diseases^_[3].

We spend so much of our time surrounded by people but engaged by our phones. Lori Cheek, architect-turned-entrepreneur at Cheekd, was lamenting about the same problem when she moved from her small town to New York City as an architect. She met her future husband on a trip to Maine: all because she had to turn off her smartphone because there wasn't any cell signal in New Hampton. When she looked up, there was this gorgeous man standing there right beside her^_[4].

So let's put down our phones for a while. Look around us. Look at people. Greet them. Smile. Just smile. You never know who might end up in your orbit...

_{Edited by Nedda Chaplin
Reference:
Humans Of New York: I Want To Have My Own Career by Karachi
Citations: 
[1] Wilson, T.D., Reinhard, D.A., Westgate, E.C., Gilbert, D.T., Ellerbeck, N., Hahn, C., Brown, C.L., & Shaked, A. (2014). Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science, 345, 75-77
[2] Shoemaker N. (2015, n.a) Some Scientists Believe Loneliness is Becoming an Epidemic. Retrieved 24 Sept 2015, from http://bigthink.com/
[3] Monbiot G., (2014, Oct 14), The age of loneliness is killing us. The Guardian. Retrieved 25 Sept 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/
[4] Hickins M., (2014, June 10) TED Talks About Human Connections. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 24 Sept 2015, from http://blogs.wsj.com/
Let's Be Friends image by Fanya & Lime}

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