unplug.

When I was a kid, the biggest deal in portable electronics was the walkman. When I got a little older, it was the discman. It probably would have made my head spin to think about the electronics explosion that would end up happening in our society. I'm not going to lie, I do love me some gadgets. However, there is one phenomenon that I can't understand and that breaks my heart a little. I call it the "cult of the white earbud", but I'm sure someone, somewhere has a more clever name for it. This refers to millions of people who see fit to remain attached to their ipod, via those white earbuds, nonstop. I have seen people engaged in conversation, both of them listening to music on their own ipods.

Now, I love music and I love love love my ipod. However, my actual ipod spends all of its time in my car or the docking station. I do have a shuffle that I use with headphones (forget those white earbuds, my ears are genetically predisposed to reject them!) when working out. As much as I love music, I think you miss out on far too much of the world around you if you are completely tuning in it out.

Sadly, one young man learned this lesson in a horrible, fatal way. My heart sank when I heard this on the news this morning, yet I wasn't surprised to hear the story. It is hard to calculate how many tragedies happen because people are tuned in to their gadgets and out of reality; no one wants to admit they were texting while driving, looking at their gps instead of the road, etc. But with this accident, the cause was clear. I pray for his grieving parents who certainly never wanted their son to become a cautionary tale, but I also think there is so much to learn from his death.