By Anna Fox-Holladay
Anyone who’s ever traveled for work can probably sympathize with this: the work day is never really over when you’re on the road. Even when you’re technically done for the day, your brain is still technically at work. There’s always another email, more preparations for your next day, or the rest of your full-time job that still continues while you travel.
My mind is always active during travel, but rarely does it dance.
As I knew I’d be working throughout the weekend, I made plans to break my challenge into chunks. I completed 7 hours on Friday night, 3 hours in the morning on Saturday, and I’m hoping to do another 4 on Monday evening. The challenge I faced was not the length or the resistance to checking my phone, but the “what if’s.”
What if one of my events tomorrow is canceled and I didn’t respond immediately? What if something happens at home and I don’t have my ringer on? What if people think I’m ignoring their messages?
I’m an avid reader. I love reading for pleasure. One of my favorite activities is pretending I’m throwing my phone in the river before I read without it for hours. There’s a reason that getting rid of my phone is a dream, and not a reality.
In a atmosphere where phones are integral to how we access information, communications, and keep in touch with our loved ones, how do we put them away? How do we set boundaries of limited screen time, when we all have to keep our phones on us to log into our Bucknell emails? How do you turn the phone off, knowing that at any moment the next call could be the one time it’s an emergency.
So what I reflected on last night was not how much I love reading distraction-free, but how much I crave a world in which there is no expectation for me to explain why I’m going to be away from my phone for 2 hours. I long for a world where we’ve solved this question: How can we be disconnected from technology while remaining connecting with our peers in a digital age?
Reading is a radical act of empathy. It’s a way for us to be vulnerable, reflect, and connect. To learn about experiences that differ from our own AND learn new things about ourselves. It’s a vessel to help us be comfortable with the uncomfortable. To keep a growth mindset. To be open to new perspectives.
Reading is one step to building an empathetic world.
This is all to say that I’m grateful to Toni Morrison’s letter for naming the feeling for this state of synchronicity between the reader and the writer, the reader and the mind. As Morrison said, reading offers a “distribution of knowledge”; the gift of education, of experiences that live outside our own point of view, one step of dismantling one’s biases. Reading is a tool for growth, learning, and empathy. Dancing minds allows us to connect and think critically about what’s happening globally/nationally, the relationships we develop with our families, colleagues, friends, and with ourselves.
I hope we continue to find ways to keep the dancing minds alive in a digital age.
Title: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee; The Atlas Complex by Olivie Blake
Hours read: 7 Hours