So much of our lives now are lived digitally.

We’re reading emails. We’re streaming videos. We’re consuming social media. We’re surfing Web pages. We’re talking to our stoic companion Alexa, asking what the weather is like outside and who won the game.

All that is great—the technology I mean. We have so much at our fingertips. It can be empowering.

But.

But then you look up and remember there’s an actual world out here. There’s someone sitting across from you at the table, staring at her own device. You suddenly wish you were making more eye contact. That you weren’t worried about taking a selfie to preserve the moment.

There’s rain pattering on the window. You hear a clock ticking. You take in a breath and exhale. And again. Inhale. Exhale.

A sleeping dog sighs and shifts in place. A bird chirps.

You want to move. To get outside and feel the sun and hear the quiet murmuring of your heart beating.

You breathe in again and recall all the smells and tastes of summer from your youth—lotion on your skin, a charred hamburger, cotton candy, Coca-Cola, watermelon, peaches.

You feel the tug to pick up your phone and write these thoughts down. But you stop, and for a few moments disconnect and become conscious of yourself again, here, breathing, living in a world far vastly greater than the sum of zeroes and ones, not projected from screens but seen in all its natural vibrant glory.

- Brandon