Can You Hold, Please?
Now, I’m in trouble. The topic I started to write about was just interrupted by the memory of an old cartoon. It’s set in a hospital’s Urology department. As the receptionist picks up the ringing phone, a customer shows up at her window. So she speaks into the phone and says,“Urology Department, can you hold?”
Maybe you have to be a lot older than some of you are, to see the humor, or discomfort in this cartoon. Nevertheless, we suffer from more than physical discomfort when we hold onto resentments, and outdated ways of doing things, for example. Or get antsy when a flight goes into a holding pattern, when it should’ve landed twenty minutes ago.
So, where is this heading? I’ve been thinking about the challenges of relationships in a digital world. How do we hold the attention of someone in a culture riddled with distractions? So what prompted this topic? It was an article in the NYT about attention infidelity. (by Jessica Grose, 9/30/26)
As the caller in the cartoon was put on hold, so we can put relationships on hold through attention infidelity. The article referenced how “digital distractions damage modern relationships.” The term came from another author, Daniel Cox. His research led him to write a book, “Generation Uncoupled: America’s New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection.”
While the term, attention infidelity may be new, all you have to do is look around to see how the digital world can intrude. You watch people walking side by side, each with a phone plastered to an ear. Or get stuck behind an erratic driver, and wonder if they’re on their phone. Then there’s the challenge of phones interrupting conversations during meal times. The author, also, cites pornography as another form of attention infidelity.
So what is worth holding on to? Each other, for sure. And that takes focused attention not on ourselves, but on the other person. It doesn’t mean we ignore taking care of ourselves, but everything is not about us, as in me, myself, and I.
Another author and priest, Tish Harrison Warren, wrote,“None of us were born looking for a screen. We were all born looking for a face.” She was challenging us to find ways to “nurture relationships in a digital world.”
For sure, I’m not anti-technology, or I wouldn’t be connecting with you via this blog. But I can’t imagine my life without times when I connect face to face and heart to heart with another person.
So, back to the Urology department.
Can you hold?
That depends.
P.S. It’s okay not to laugh. I won’t hold it against you. Be merciful, I’m old.