What Was in the Room

A quiet reading.

I’ve been spending time with the word “presence,” trying to understand its place in a world increasingly shaped by distraction. It seems we are having a harder time remaining fully where we are.

There is much that could be said about presence, but I want to set that aside for a moment and tell a story.

A grandmother recently told me that her granddaughter had discovered the card game solitaire. The child was young enough that it was a bit surprising how quickly she caught on. Before long, that same day, she was playing Pounce, where several people play solitaire at once, racing to get rid of the pounce pile first. She was right there with the adults, holding her own.

Then her aunt entered the room with a cell phone in hand.

When Grandma looked back toward the table, her granddaughter was no longer there. She found her nearby, already on the phone.

“What just happened?” she asked.

It is my question too.

Would I have left an exciting game of Pounce to go be on my phone? My first answer is no. But I had to pause before saying it. Perhaps a phone can begin to look more attractive than the game, especially if I am losing. Or perhaps the pull of the screen has simply become so familiar that we hardly notice when it takes us away.

So what was in the room?

It seems to me that something valuable can be lost in such a small turning. The game was more than a game. It was shared attention, shared laughter, shared presence. People in the same room, gathered around the same thing.

And then, almost without notice, that presence thinned.

A phone entered the room, and what had been holding everyone together loosened. What was offered instead was not the same. What was offered instead was not the same.

Presence had been in the room.

The phone took her away from it.

Return to Home