I must confess that I have a taste for information and lovers and pizza though perhaps in a different order and yes, my family does bring me a deep satisfaction as I watch them grow and make mistakes and dig themselves out of the chasms into which they have fallen, emerging not necessarily unscathed, but somehow still resilient and hopeful.
But I do not care to watch them or their typed words on a tiny screen held in the palm of my hand 24 hours a day. In fact, I do not wish to watch them on a tiny screen at all.
I prefer to look into their eyes to gauge their situation and in fact measured doses are fine, allowing time to both anticipate beforehand and to consider and savor afterwards.
That device in the hand may be a portal, but it is a tether as well.
Solitude has its own underappreciated, even forgotten, merits and is increasingly forsaken for ceaseless stimulation, interaction cheapened and diminished by its own pervasiveness.
I do not always wish to be found but when that temperament passes, when we finally meet after an interlude, I always find the reunion more boisterous, more satisfying, more meaningful.
And the weather? Even if I forego the joys of the portal, I imagine that if I think and think, I may come up with a way of determining whether it is raining outside.
Everywhere I go, I see someone peering into their hand, talking to it, tapping on it, another Diogenes searching for the truth, but distracted by the glow of the very lantern they hold eternally aloft and that bellows constantly for their attention.