We are experiencing the death of awkward.
What do I mean?
Anytime we remotely feel awkward, we escape. We quickly avoid that awkward space and fill it with our phones or some form of entertainment. We are frantically filling our minds with more, no matter what it is. Something. Anything. Just don’t let me sit here and think. Just don’t let me feel awkward or uncomfortable!
We have become Cultural Escape Artists. Our phone, the new cigarette break. Giving us some hit of dopamine through some distraction. Like cigarette smoking of eras past, it’s become our socially acceptable escape. Yet, like we now all know about cigarette addictions and what it’s doing to our health, what can be said about our smart phone addictions?
We can be with others physically, yet slip away to somewhere, anywhere else on our phones. We are the Refresh Generation, constantly refreshing our phone feed, constantly looking for something, which becomes our everything, while we really find nothing much of anything.
Yet, what are we missing by losing those awkward, boring, and quiet moments of our life? What are the ramifications and effects?
3 Reasons We Need Awkward, Quiet, and Boring Spaces in Our Lives
- Our Minds Need Silence to Function Properly.
You know that sponge in your sink that kind of smells because it’s always wet at the bottom of the sink. Really, you should have thrown it away a month ago, yet for some reason you keep “cleaning” your dishes with it like it’s actually helping! The sponge has lost it’s effectiveness as a sponge.
Well, our minds resemble that smelly sink sponge. Our minds are losing their effectiveness because we never let them “dry out.”
We are constantly filling these gaps in our days with more, which in turn is constantly giving us less. We’re actually draining our mental “reservoir” when we won’t stop adding to it.
Our mental breaks into our phone are, in a way, breaking us. Instead of taking a break into our phone, if we just took a walk down a path, around a lake, or anywhere with some feel of nature, it would do more for our mental health and feelings of peace and contentment than any app could ever hope to compete with.
I’ve begun scheduling a walk into my work day. I don’t listen to any earbuds. I just pray and listen to what the Lord has to offer. Not only has this time become extremely helpful for my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health, but it’s actually the most productive hour of my work day. I have more breakthrough ideas and revelations. I wrote so much of my book Listen To Your Day while hiking than I did while staring at a screen, which leads to point number two.
- A-Ha Moments Don’t Happen By Accident
A-ha moments don’t happen by accident. They happen in the quiet, peaceful moments of our day where we’ve just allowed ourselves to be silent and think.
This is why people often say they have more breakthrough ideas in the shower than anywhere else. Psychologists call this the “incubation effect.” Our minds are working on solving problems when it is at peace and in silence. We’re able to have breakthrough ideas when we allow spaces in our day to actually think about them.
When your mind is constantly filled with noise, thoughts and ideas will escape like little birds flying away the moment you get too close.
We can’t let our days become an unending, unceasing cacophony of noise. If we do, how will we hear anything? It’s like music. A great song can’t actually be a song without the silent pauses in between the notes.
- Our Day Has So Much To Tell Us
There’s so much truth, insight, and revelation found in the details of our day. We have to listen to it. We have to let ourselves experience the awkward, the boring, and the uncomfortable, to see and hear what might be offered to us in that moment.
As I first wrote in 101 Questions You Need to Ask in Your Twenties, “When we remove all awkward, we remove all possibilities for unexpected amazing.”2
When we escape into our phones, not only are we filling our thoughts up with whatever spills onto our screen. But we’re also missing all the things we could and should be paying attention to throughout our day.
If we’re going to listen to our day, then there have to be times when we’re not physically listening to anything else. If we’re going to pay attention to the details of our day, then our eyes need to be open to what’s happening around us and in us. We need to be aware of what we’re paying attention to in the moments where it feels like “nothing” is going on.
We typically call these “chance encounters.” I call them “Non-So-Chance Encounters.” What are the odds that you’re standing in line next to that person? Or next to someone on an airplane? Or all of a sudden sharing a ski lift with a stranger up a mountain?
Most of us pull out our phones or quickly put in our AirPods so that we can quickly escape the moment because initially it feels a little awkward. But what might happen if you allowed yourself to be open to the moment. To be free and available. To have your ears and eyes open to what the Lord wants to show and bring us instead of what the world is shouting at us.
We used to live annoyed with distractions. Now, far too often we live for them.
Quiet spaces in our lives are sacred. We need to treat them as such. It’s like letting your mind enter a wide-open meadow to explore instead of keeping it wedged into the confines of your phone.
We have to take back our own attention, building new habits and practices of intentional attention. Paying attention is not passive. Paying attention is a choice. We only really see what we’re looking for. So what are you paying attention to today?
You have a purpose worth paying attention to. Make your day, today and each day, be bigger than your distractions.
Excerpted from Listen To Your Day: The Life-Changing Practice of Paying Attention by Paul Angone. Copyright 2023. BakerPublishingCompany.com
