Patience and the Parking Place

Sometimes all I need to do is stand where I am to be blessed. - WORD. May 2014. 

This time of year is a test of my patience and I'm sure yours.

Lines are long, people are desperate to get things right, expectations can be high because the holidays are supposed to be perfect. Right?

I can do without all that. I am impatient and I like to get things crossed off my list.  Mainly, I just want you to finish your shopping, go to the car, drop it off, take your shopping cart back, get back into your car, start the engine and drive to your next destination. It is that simple - shop, load, return, leave.

It just doesn't happen like that any more.  Now we do our shopping usually while taking a phone call, pay for our groceries without interacting with the clerks or cashiers,  dump our stuff in our car, get in our cars and .... JUST SIT THERE checking our mail, tweets, stocks and snap chats until we're happily caught up with the world that we just interacted with 10 minutes ago.

There are others who need that parking place.

There are other shoppers who would love to move freely around the store without you blocking the aisles talking about what you are having for dinner.

I have now given up any hopes of getting a parking place by stalking a driver with bags going to their cars. I figure I'll just earn a few more fitbit steps by parking further in an already vacant stall and save myself the aggravation of watching your fiddle in the blue glow of your screen.

I'm not immune to this either, but watching others has made me so much more self aware.

You can either let it go or be like me and just go further.

Plats du Jour

Many small boxes (not of take out), November 2014. 

Sunday is a big day for eating out in Paris.  Families gather to have a lovely lunch out and catch up and tourists look at menus with great hesitation trying to decide whether to venture inside a bistro to get something to eat. Others may wander in to get out the cold or hot or just take a load off.  In all cases, it is nice to take a break and spend the next hour - erm, staring at a screen.

Face it, most of us are guilty of doing this.  You have been pretty darn good all day long.  You may have used your phone to take a few pictures or look up directions, but once you sit down, you are lost.  We are guilty of catching up with Instagram comments, answering work emails from six thousand miles away, or waiting to take a picture of your soup.

The important things is we're sitting down to eat a meal someone else has prepared and more than likely,we're sitting with someone we like/love/respect and we're not paying giving them or the food the attention it or they deserve.

Today I witnessed many tables where both parties were eating and typing at the same time. They weren't sitting at a fast food establishment wolfing down a burger to rush back to their desks.  These were people who were dropping close to 80 bucks per person to eat lunch and they barely spent it interacting with each other or their food.

Why even bother?

I am just as guilty as others, but I am trying really hard to be mindful about this. We have a no phones the table unless the world is ending or the World Series is on. Is it okay to tune in instead of tuning out by shutting out the real world?

Is it okay to just thank the waitstaff who has seated you and brought you food? Is it okay to chew each mouthful of food and be humbled that someone went to the trouble to feed you? 

Watching other's today made me even more determined to stop looking at my phone for entertainment and start paying attention to what is going on around me.

How about you?  Do you have a no-phone/device policy while eating?