I was reading a story in Readers Digest about a guy who was having lunch with a friend, to his friends’ dismay he kept glancing at his blackberry. Finally in exasperation the friend said to him that he lived on it and wasn’t able to put it down and have a face to face conversation. In the ensuing story, the two made a bet that the fellow wouldn’t last a weekend without turning it on. To his surprise he found it was difficult at best, but he managed and won the bet. During the weekend he found out that he was missing out on life while being so connected to this electronic devise that he kept attached to his hip.

I have to chuckle, I don’t think many of us would survive without our cell phones, blackberries and other portable devices. I find it very distracting and frustrating while conversing with someone to have them constantly text messaging others. I have this wonderful friend who while we’re talking she’s texting others. She’ll look at me and go along as though she’s listening and when I toss something unexpected in she’ll agree. The other day she was texting someone and I said “Hey, do you like squid in soy sauce? She gave me this blank look and said yes. I started giggling and she said what? I said did you even hear what I said or did you check out on the conversation? She sheepishly admitted to having checked out on the conversation and apologized.

How often do you find yourself at your child’s game, watching and checking your email? How many times have you had a conversation with someone only to find that you missed the main points of what you are talking about because you were busy looking at some email that told you “You might be our grand prize winner?”

While I think that our portable devices are wonderful assets in our lives, I think that more often than not we let them become our lives fearing that we will miss something important, when what we are really missing is life. Perhaps it’s time for us to put down our electronic gizmo’s and focus on what is important.