Did you manage to watch Justin Timberlake’s performance at Super Bowl 52 half time show? If you haven’t, you can watch it on YouTube and you will see this young person taking a selfie while Timberlake was performing and it was obvious that he was trying to post the picture online and make it look like Timberlake was disturbing him from posting the photo.
Now this poor kid is a victim of funny memes and became a punch line to jokes because of how he handled himself in front of the whole world, while one of the best entertainers that ever lived was performing his greatest hits.
His action seems to be the social norm, on weekends when I drive my kids around to their weekend sports, I see parents doing the similar thing. They spend the whole time looking at their phone missing what’s happening around them. I myself have been guilty of this and it’s a habit that I am slowly changing.
One time I was waiting for my daughter to finish her Taekwondo and another child approached her parent and asked excitedly, “Did you see it? I broke the board with my kick. It was awesome, did you see it?”
The parent gave me a weird look, as he knows that I am aware that he was head down on his iPhone for the whole duration of the class.
It was a wake up call for me. It made me reflect inwardly and made me realise that what I was doing was not healthy and it was not the way I thought I would be as a parent.
You see this habit of being on our phone and missing what was happening in front of us is due to the fact that social media is a part of life.
Many of us want to show our social network what is happening in our life, for example an OFW that is away from their family for long periods of time. I totally get it because that is the only means of communicating and reaching out to them.
However if you are at a live comedy show and you are watching the comedian deliver the punch line through your phone along with your three followers on Facebook live then you are missing out on life.
This rant that I am in the middle of can be targeted to myself and yes there is a bit of truth in that; and no, my wife did not write this article.
I want you to take time and smell the roses, enjoy and taste that morsel of food that you are chewing, feel the sunlight on your face and how the light cool breeze is making your lips chapped.
Be in the moment and you should not worry about the people in your social media. It is not important to instantly know what sneaker DJ Khaled is wearing; if it is important and he requires your opinion, he will call you.
Be in the moment, be present and don’t live your life through your phone. Be aware of what is happening around you, focus on the people around you, and be fun to be around with.
However if you want pictures of sneakers, sarcastic memes, and selfies of a bald guy in his late 30s then you can search and follow me on Instagram under thadmangalino. Trust me you will be disappointed.
Until next time, STAY FOCUSED!
(For comments or feedback, email thadmangalino@gmail.com)
