The relentless grind

I knew I had a problem when I found myself attempting to read emails on my laptop while sitting in the bath. The relaxing cup of chamomile tea went undrunk; the lavender-scented bubbles slowly popped around me, and still I wrestled to keep the screen above the water-line.

Technology adds a great deal to life, and I wouldn’t be without it. But it produces a kind of relentless electronic fidgeting which eats up the mental attention and makes any kind of intellectual focus increasingly difficult. The distinction between work time and leisure time gets blurred and we get snappish and tetchy. We may shoot off an email at 1.00am, but how well are we actually communicating?

There’s no doubt that we are creatures hard-wired for communication, but it isn’t all about speed or immediacy. I once had a spiritul director who was a wise, occasionally-stroppy and largely silent nun. The tradition she represented saw self-control, listening and not speaking as essential for the kind of deep communication we were created for. Anything less would ultimately be unsatisfying. 'Be still and know that I am God' wrote the Psalmist or to paraphrase: stop the relentless fidgeting, stop worrying that your missing something, and give yourself wholly over to listening. In that stillness there is the space for creativity and complex thinking ; we may even a whisper of the voice of God.