Small Gestures

I’ve been speaking out against selling our souls to machines for most of my adult life and even in my liberal paradise of San Francisco, it’s a lost battle. Driverless cars clog the streets, AI billboards are everywhere, people here, like everywhere, are wandering about the streets in zombie-like trance staring at their phones. This long-held fantasy that machines will save our souls has been gathering strength for centuries, like a snowball rolling down hill, each moment larger and larger until the avalanche of consequences is upon us. 

 

And yet. On a rare hot San Francisco night, the streets in my neighborhood were abuzz with humans gathering and talking and laughing and eating and drinking. After a lovely meal in a Japanese restaurant with no music blaring or distracting screens on the walls, my wife and I walked the fifteen blocks on Irving Street toward our home, loving the energy in the air. We passed the Game Room, a place devoted solely to three-dimensional no-plugs games and it was filled to overflowing, each table with a different game and not a phone in sight. Heaven. 

 

Yesterday I walked in the park and passed a couple speaking Spanish and looking in their phone. I asked them (in Spanish) if they needed help finding something and when they told me, “The Japanese Tea Garden,” I said, “Follow me,” and walked with them. Found out they were from Galicia and I told them the cities I had visited there. Turns out that they were elementary school teachers and that opened up a whole other round of connection. My personal contribution to reminding us all that conversation with strangers is often more satisfying than Google maps. 

 

A minute after bidding them goodbye, a young woman passing said “Doug!” Didn’t recognize here immediately, but the moment she told me her name, I knew instantly who she was, even though it had been twenty years since I had taught her. Her brother, also my former student, was with her and didn’t we have a delightful chat about what they’re up to now and who they’ve kept in touch with from their classes and what their parents are up to. And yes, I pulled out my phone for a group selfie, but only after we had visited. 

 

Walking back through the park, people were walking, jogging, biking, rollerskating, playing volleyball, tossing frisbees, throwing balls to their dogs, gathered in circles on lawns, admiring the daffodils or buds on the cherry trees, all mostly eyes up with phones away. Life on a lovely Spring day as it’s meant to be lived. 

 

So yes, I will continue to rant and rave about the devils we’ve sold our soul to—probably in the next post! But the best antidote is to live well, to connect with each other, to smell flowers and hug trees, to choose to ask directions of passing strangers, to look up as we walk and nod to the people we meet, a small gesture that says: 

 

“Hey! I’m a human being and so are you and we pretty much share the same sorrows and joys and it’s a beautiful Spring day, so let’s make a little eye contact and let each other know, even for one passing instant.”