Dedicated to my Uncle Jim
Special Thanks to Fr. Jeremy Merzweiler (Thanks for the idea!)
Eric Pickersgill is a photographer whose work went viral about 9 months ago. You may remember the series of pictures entitled: “Removed.”
It is a series of about 20 images of people in different situations all staring at the palm of their hands. At first they are almost comical (a newly married husband and a wife sitting on the dash of their car checking their phones in between shots with the “Just Married” sign in the background. Their attention is not on each other but on their cell phones. They begin to get more and more haunting as you look at them.
The second picture is of a family. As they are sitting around the dining room table. Their food has been eaten. The father, mother, and children are all looking down at their hands. The entire family is gathered around the table. Not one person is looking at another.
The picture that I found most haunting was the one at a 4th of July barbeque. The husband was tending the meat while looking down at his hand. The wife was sitting on the bed of the truck looking at her hand. The daughter is washing dishes and looking at her hand. The little boy is chopping wood and looking at the photographer. I realized that I did that. I was the one looking at my cell phone.
This is me!
The reality is we are all trapped. If it is not our cell phone, it is something else.
Here’s what Eric Pickersgill wrote:
“The work began as I sat in a café’ one morning. This is what I wrote about my observation:
A family sitting next to me at Illium Café in Troy, New York, is so disconnected from one another. Not much talking. The father and two daughters have their own phones out. The mom doesn’t have one or chooses to leave it or put away. She stares out the window, sad and alone, in the company of her closest family! The Dad looks up every so often to announce some obscure piece of info he found online. Twice he goes on about a large fish that was caught. No one replies. I am saddened by the use of technology for interaction in exchange for not interacting. This has never happened before and I doubt we have scratched the surface of the social impact of this new experience. The mom has her phone out now.
The image of that family, the mother’s face, the teenage girls’ and their father’s posture and focus on the palm of their own hands has been burned in my mind. It was one of those moments where you see something so amazingly common that it startles you into consciousness of what is actually happening! It is impossible to forget. I see this family at the grocery store, in classrooms, on the side of the highway, and in my own bed as I fall asleep next to my wife. We rest back-to-back on our sides, coddling our small, cold, illuminated devices every night.”
That was the epiphany that lead him to do this series of pictures called, “Removed.” The reality is we ponder this question, “Who is our neighbor?” Our neighbor is often the person right next to us. Someone sitting next to us at a restaurant, or our own family members. How do we treat them? How do we acknowledge them? Do we allow them to enter into our presence? I know 2000 years ago, there were no cell phones when Jesus was telling this parable.
That was the epiphany that lead him to do this series of pictures called, “Removed.” The reality is we ponder this question, “Who is our neighbor?” Our neighbor is often the person right next to us. Someone sitting next to us at a restaurant, or our own family members. How do we treat them? How do we acknowledge them? Do we allow them to enter into our presence? I know 2000 years ago, there were no cell phones when Jesus was telling this parable.
The minds of the priest and rabbi were so preoccupied they could walk by someone who was half-beaten up, half alive, and not see him. It was only when the Samaritan walked by that saw the man, that compassion filled his heart. His compassion allowed him to take care of the man. He brought him to a hotel and provided for his needs. It was his awareness that allowed for the compassion. The first two were so preoccupied they were not aware or were fearful to deal with the situation, they were busy, or did not want to be burdened.
The reality is we all fall prey to this. Two thousand years later, we have these mobile phones. How much time do we spend looking at our hands? The average person checks their smart phone once every five minutes. That is how addicted we are. If you know me, you know I love technology and smart phones. However, I also know the great danger they can bring. I see it in my own family. Sometimes I see it on Sunday after dinner and everyone has their device. I will never forget my Uncle Jim, another father figure in the family, my grandfather’s brother. One day he was sitting there, and he looked around at all of us and we were all on our devices. He was so disgusted he stood up and said, “I am leaving!” When he said that, I realized why he was leaving. Here is Uncle Jim, 86 years old, no device and we are all staring at our devices. And here we have this amazing man in our presence and no one is paying any attention to him!
I want to invite all of you to think about that. Who is your neighbor? Or maybe, more importantly, what is it that keeps you distracted from realizing who your neighbor is? What is the distraction that keeps us so preoccupied that we cannot acknowledge and appreciate the person right across the table from us! What is it that caused my Uncle Jim to stand up and leave that day? It was the realization that there was no connection. Even though we were all in the same room together, we weren’t treating each other as if we were actually together.
And so as the photographer came across that epiphany, and developed the pictures of the people so removed from each other, maybe we can realize whenever we are looking at the palm of our hands, we are not acknowledging the neighbor before us. I invite you to remember that. Who is your neighbor? As Jesus said treat them with mercy.
