All Is Not Lost: Hope For a Generation

I was anywhere between seven and eleven years old. A summer weekday morning would come, and my mom would come and wake me in my room. “Let’s go out to the farm, and pick green beans with Ju Ju.” (Ju Ju was the affectionate name we grandkids gave to my grandmother). It was anywhere between 7:00- 8:30 am. I slid on my messy clothes, hopped in the car with an old ice cream bucket in my hands as we drove the dirt road to my grandparent’s farm house.

I crouched down like a frog on a lily pad and reached under the green bean bushes of our family garden. I held my hand out with the same curious uncertainty of one reaching out to grab a cow utter, until my hand latched onto something. I could not see it, but my hands could feel it. A perfectly shaped green bean stalk. I snatched it downward to release it from the plant and dropped it in my bucket. Again and again I would do this motion. I waddled down the isle over to the black eyed peas. I did those in a similar pattern. My calves must have been quite strong to perform such tasks, but these are the unforeseen treasures of being a child. It was early enough that it was not too hot, but exhilarating enough that sweat formed on my brow and soaked my cotton t-shirt and shorts.

I pulled off the tomato hornworms that would so easily invade and destroy the plant, and as a reward my mom would give me five dollars for each one I would find. I happily agreed to this missional task. Bees and butterflies were on my left, and the occasional garden snake on my right. My feet and toes were buried in the tilled up dirt that had dried up by that West Tennessee, invasive sun. But man, did it feel so good.

I would spend the rest of my day at my aunt’s pool playing Marco Polo and Pick-A-Color with my cousins. This would be interrupted by snack breaks and shucking the pea shells I had harvested earlier that morning. Then I would snap the ends of the green beans for my mother to can. Occasionally, I would steal a few for a little mid-day snack. I did this for so long that my hands were sore, and my fingers had turned purple from the pea shells. These are the cherished memories of an easy-to-please, country girl.

It was the early 2000’s. I recognize that the image I painted looked like one set in southern Alabama from the early 50’s. Most millennials identify the early 2000’s with memories such as gameboys, league softball, polly pockets, and skating rink birthday parties. Don’t worry, my childhood was filled with memories like those too. I did not live in an agrarian time capsule that kept me from similar, more modern activities. Nevertheless, I did grow up with what felt like having one foot in an agrarian, simple, lifestyle, and one foot in the modern age. To this day it is still a tension I carry, but a beloved one that has led me further into study, and given me the courage and grace to write to you.

When I was 13 I received my first cell phone. It was a silver flip phone with an antenna that extended up as I pulled it. How I had begged for it. It was a right of passage for an upcoming teenager. Suddenly I was now “in the loop”, and you could now reach me whenever you wanted with my seven-digit exclusive number. No longer would someone have to call my parent’s land line and ask to speak to Emily with the possibility of my little brother listening in on the other line. I was accessible, all the time, any where. Over the years I have had several phones that have all upgraded in style and capability over time, but one thing has remained consistent from the time I was 13 years old. I am still accessible all the time, anywhere.

At first, I loved this advantage. How convenient! Little did I know that choosing to take a step towards progress would be a slippery slope of slowly losing my social capabilities. Everyone knows that society has slowly become disconnected with the world around us, but do we remember how quickly it happened? The moment is different for everyone. I am 23 years old in the height of a millennial age, and therefore represent the average representation of the millennial generation, but did you know that the bridge between connection and disconnection for my age group is only about a 10 year gap? My first phone at 13 could only merely place phone calls back and forth. Now I am 23, living in an age where my watch, maps, games, calculator, notepad, and camera all live on the same device. I interact with a robot named siri, and give her instructions to preform for me. 10 years before, I went to my teachers for information, 10 years later I ask my device. What if this disconnection between man and the world wasn’t that long ago, and if it wasn’t that long ago, what if there is still hope for a generation?

The industrial revolution began in England in the 1700’s. It was a burst of innovation, inventions, and ideas that caused machines to replace the need for human hands to do as much work. It started with things like mechanical looms in the textile industry, and expanded into using water power, burning of fossil fuels, and eventually the creation of electricity, and steam engines. What a wonderful and iconic achievement in history! There is true beauty in seeing what man can accomplish through innovations, but it is important to note that man worked, lived, and did most everything by hand until only 200- 300 years ago.

What if the gap between connection and disconnection was not that long ago?

My deepest and most sincere request is that those reading my writings do not conclude that I am anti-technology or anti-progress. These are wonderful tools that have made jobs, connections, travel, currency, and education more accessible. We are greatly privileged to live in an age where technology and possibility is bestowed upon us. It was a gift we were born with as an inheritance. However, my story of disconnection is not a rare anecdote, but rather a similar story that has affected nearly every young person in the current and rising generation.

As I began to grow up unhealthily attached to my technology, the quantity of my life increased, but the quality of my life severely plummeted. “How could there be such a difference in my joy levels in only 10 years!? Where did the time go? Is this just the growing pains of getting older?”.

It is not, and it was not. It was the mere result of my choice of disconnection.

Think back to that bright eyed little girl, toes buried in the mulch, gardening with her grandmother. She was feeling, moving, breathing, exploring, and working. These are the joy-filled memories that bring me back to happiness. Hardly any of my adolescent memories glued to technology have made their way into a hallway of nostalgia in my heart. In fact, at times I grieve over opportunities presented to me that were missed, passed up, rejected, and refused. This discontentment is what led to my Sacred Mountain journey of returning to presentness- the art of living awake. Our mission is that you would live and stay awake, in whatever way that looks for you. This may not be applicable to certain people; however, for me, and many others I would presume, it is going to have to look like reevaluating what amount of technology is appropriate in our lives, and at what point has it crossed the line into robbing from our presentness. This is a question we must all face at one point in our lives. As a person who is constantly asking questions I cannot help but wonder, “ just because the whole world is living a certain way, does it mean that it is the right approach or fully beneficial?” Asking these kind of questions are what help shape a better tomorrow, and a better quality today.

There has been much criticism about the current generation being lost, but I have a contradictory opinion. What if a generation is not doomed? What if connection, intimacy, hard work, and creativity is not lost? What if there is a better quality of life waiting for you that you never knew existed? Perhaps, the generation you were born into did not allow or set up the example of proper connection, alertness, and joy. Sacred Mountain wants to be your access point of remembrance, recollection, or perhaps your first ever journey to living your life awake. Wether you are 15 years old and have only been exposed to life with technology, 23 and you lived with one foot in presentness and the other in placelesness, or 45 in a world that has constantly changed from one technological advance to the next. Know that we are not the only generations who have lived on this earth, and if we look deep into the stories of humanity, we will remember that there are some things in life that transcend through time to bring joy and completeness. What once was a homogenous way of living, must now be an active choice for the current generation. While those who lived without technology had the unasked for gift of presentness, many of the current generation with the gift of technology still feel empty, friendless, purposeless, and unsatisfied. Perhaps ask yourself today why that is. The world is ever changing as technology will likely always increase and live among us wether we like it or not, but the ability to live presently, full of life, and thriving, is a choice that only you can make, and my prayer for myself, and a generation is that we would choose to stay awake.

-Emily Phillips