Tag Archives: phone

May 7, 2025 · 9:15 pm

The Heart Goes…

I have coached football for almost 30 years. When I teach how to tackle, I teach the player to focus their eyes on the opposing players hips. To keep their head up. They should never see the grass of the field. 

I was a running back. I was taught to read my offensive linemen’s numbers. To follow their lead.

I have coached basketball. When a player is dribbling, I instruct them to have their eyes up, never look at the ball.

I have coached every event in track and field. I was a jumper in high school and college. I never looked at the board when jumping. I coach my athletes not to look at the board because the body goes where the eyes go.

But in life, there is another part of ourselves that goes with where the eyes go… that is our heart.

This is important to consider, especially at this moment in our culture. Our eyes are practically glued to screens. As a dad I see parents just sit on a park bench as their child plays. I see it in the hallways of school. I battle everyday to get students to put their phones away. You can see people looking at their phones as they drive.

The heart goes where the eyes go. Just the fact of being locked onto the screen shows what matters to someone. Parents ignore their children, students don’t talk to anyone, people don’t even know when the light changes.

I believe that our actions show what we truly care about. At this moment, I see people care more about their phones than other people, the blue sky, a friend, because their eyes are on a screen. Their heart is for the screen.

I haven’t even discussed what is on the screen, just the action of staring for HOURS a day at a screen. Our heart goes where our eyes go.

We are missing out on relationships, beauty, and a depth to our own lives because we don’t look up. We don’t observe. We don’t think. These actions strengthen our hearts. Good and bad times strengthen our hearts, but only if we look up. Observe the complexity of loving someone. Of striving for a goal. Reacting to another’s tears.  We have to see these to feel them.

If you want to know what condition your heart is in, follow where your eyes go.

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June 3, 2024 · 12:27 pm

Gold Dust

I recently learned how jewelers handle the scraps and dust from the precious metals and stones they work with. How they sweep their workspace, clean their clothes, and collect as much as they can of the gold dust and diamond shards in their shops. There are a number of different ways they extract the different metals, but it is worth the effort. They can reuse some scraps, but mostly they can exchange the gold dust for money.

There is even a story of a person buying a floor mat from a jewelry workshop then made a thousand dollars by cleaning and collecting the scraps and dust from it. (Might be an urban legend. I could not verify the story, but many articles referenced the story.)

As I listened about this process (and then researched it), an idea came to mind…

Do we live our lives as if it is as valuable as gold dust?

Let’s see if I can connect these dots to highlight the importance of this question.

First, our lives are filled with big moments, like a piece of jewelry, a diamond ring, or gold necklace. We value those moments just like we value the jewelry. But what about all the small bits of our life, the small amounts of time? Time in the car, waiting for the oven to preheat, the last five minutes of class?

How valuable is that time for you? If it was gold dust you would take the time and energy to collect it, to save it. Jewelers spend a lot of energy collecting these small scraps from their work. But what do you do with yours? What do I do with mine? Do I check my phone, play some match-3 game while ignoring people around me? I have. Even with my daughters sitting next to me. So instead of talking, or having Attitude T-rex show up (dad thing… hard to explain), I waste eight minutes waiting till the oven beeps, indicating it is now 400 degrees.

Here’s the other dot, and maybe the most important aspect of my thoughts… a jeweler collects the smallest particles, saves them until there is enough to exchange the dust for money or uses the different scraps later for another piece of jewelry.

The smallest moments of our lives work the same way. What does playing a match-3 game do for me later, beside leveling up? For most of the time we spend on our phones, what do we get from it? Seriously? If we spend the small amounts of time talking, thinking, drawing, something, anything more human oriented, we build quality into our lives. We build better relationships, create depth and meaning in our lives.

What would life be like if we treated our time as if it was gold dust?

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November 15, 2011 · 9:02 am

Connections

The picture is my youngest daughter with an iPad.  She will turn two in late December.  I recently made folders on the iPad, and with out any instruction, she figured out where her favorite apps were.  She enjoys drawing and animal apps, the ones that make the animal noises.  And yes, we have set her down in front of the iPad when we need a minute or two to finish dinner.  But as soon as I grab a book, or flop down on the floor, she will ignore the iPad to interact with me.  But will that always be the case?

A few weeks ago the boys had their first basketball practice. The whole elementary basketball league met at the high school for this practice.  There were some high school boys helping, and a few other boys that may have been there to help but were goofing around at an open basket.

Two of the boys were on the basketball team and were dressed in practice gear.  The third boy was dressed in jeans and a too-large polo shirt.  They were shooting crazy shots, doing alley-oops, just being teenagers.  Burning off energy and having a fun time.  Honestly, I was watching them with a touch of jealousy as they jumped to see if they could touch the rim.  I remembered those younger days when my friends and I would do the same thing.  Some milestones of adolescence do not change; other aspects seem to be changing.

The three of them were lost in the moment, simply being friends, simply having fun.  Then a cell phone went off.  The boy in the jeans immediately grabbed his phone to send a quick text.  That changed everything, the simplest yet powerful connection of that moment was gone.  One of the boys went off to help a group, the boy in the jeans and the other boy tried to continue to play, but the cell phone was now the most important thing.

Technology had become the focus.  At one point the boy in the jeans was throwing an alley-oop passes to the other one.  The boy had the ball in his hands when his phone went off again.  Ball in one hand, he pulls out the phone to check the text message.  Without even looking at his friend, he simply rolls the basketball toward the basket.  His attention now fully on the phone.  His friend grabbed the ball and walked off.  It saddened me.

I love technology, but this life is about people, about relationships.  Technology allows us even greater opportunities to connect with friends and family.  It gives us a chance to make connects with people we normally would never had been able to before.  But at this time when the definition of Friend is “click accept.”  That a text message on the phone has to be answered right now, no matter what is happening. We need to make the focus on the connection to people, not on the means of making the connection.

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