Broke my record for 5 km an hour ago.As I finished my run and was recovering after breathing really hard, I opened up the usual Pokemon Go, just to swipe a few times for fun. In the dim light of the night, I thought to myself, "Wow, we're really living in the future. 6 months ago and I wouldn't even imagine playing a game that was tied to reality." But as I walked back, I looked down at my the ground in front of my feet, with the quiet of the night surrounding me. I became a lot more aware of the moment. I looked around, and saw the trees, barked and uneven trunks so large I could hide behind it and not be seen. So tall it would take me up to the fifth or sixth story if I climbed it. I looked at the bushes, its lush thick leaves still wet from the evening rain. I looked at the terraced houses across the road, most designed in the seventies and eighties, with olden gates and tiled ceramic flooring. I looked at the drain, water gushing out from one of those drain pipes, giving a spraying sound so seldom heard these days. I heard the insects, faint as they were, continually chirping.

When did I lose sight of what was in the present? My thoughts often dwelling in the future, or past, yet so seldom having that acute sense of consciousness of the now. I looked around and asked myself many questions. Have I wondered, how the running track was made? Or perhaps, how often do the orange lamppost lights get replaced? Or how old these towering trees are, and that they used to be mere saplings. In my childhood I was fascinated with the world around me, all these little details of God's creation, and the intellect and creativity He has given his creation to make yet more things. I often forget the present, and I want to recapture that. To ask these little questions and be awestruck by the world around me.

Technology has distracted us from what is most beautiful, what is most pure, what is most innocent. How many times have we been guilty of taking out our phones when amongst friends over a meal? How often do we instinctively reach for that phone the moment we have to wait. Remember the old days when there were no such distractions? How much easier it was to focus on the person in front of us, and focus on our immediate surroundings, taking in the sights, smells, feels of the place. Have we not turned into a society where we have substituted the beauty of creation with a poor man-made tool that distorts what is truly important?

I closed Pokemon Go. That next PokeStop, that next rare Pokemon didn't really matter after all.


|| posted by Kuan Hui