On my walk yesterday, as I passed a cafe, I stopped and paused to watch from a distance, two children, I guess about aged 5 or so, with, presumably, their father, eating ice cream.

They were captivated by it. Playing with putting it in their mouths and giggling to each other, talking, moving the little plastic ice-cream spoons around their mouths as they savoured it. They even offered their different flavours to each other.

I smiled as I watched them lost in this precious childhood moment together.

Meanwhile their father stared at his phone…

In thinking about this since yesterday, I noticed my own thoughts and judgments about it. It’s easy for us to forget what it’s like to be a parent, in today’s ‘modern world’ of juggling a zillion things at once. That busy mentality that not only robs us of witnessing precious moments like this one, but also robs us of ‘now’ - a.k.a life.

When I look back at my time as a parent of young children some of it is just a blur; I wonder WTF happened? So often caught up in the role of provider, rather than being present. Always something to do in preparation for tomorrow.

And I also notice I can not remember a single, pleasant conversation with my own father after he got home from work. Not one.

So maybe this is not about the modern world after all.
Maybe the modern world simply offers us many more tools and options to manage our time and our presence, and we simply do not use them to free us back into now.

I carry in my pocket a device that enables me to communicate with almost every person I know in the world, and to share with them what is going on. It also enables me to have all incoming interruptions handled in one place so that I can attend to them any time I choose. That time doesn’t have to be now. That device is available to me any time.

We can switch off phones, ignore calls, allow emails to accumulate for us to attend to later. We CAN delay giving our attention to Facebook, our online shopping, and tomorrows weather report.

We can’t delay this current moment. You can't postpone now.
The ice cream always melts.