What’s on my mind today is that the world is speeding up, while so many of us are endeavoring to slow down. What’s on my mind is that we are hungering for real connection, while the nature of communication is continually moving in the direction of bite-sized morsels bordering on the superficial.

iPhones, Smart Phones, iPads, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and the all pervasive texting. @balance, @slowdown, @tinyhomes, btw, lol, wtf, and HT.

These are the new norms, our method of continual engagement, constant connection, and abbreviated exchanges of ideas, thoughts, and goings ons.

Have we asked ourselves lately if all this connection is making us feel more connected, or more disconnected? More efficient, or more frantic? More aware, or more confused?

Technology is great. I love technology, but not technology for technology’s sake. I love finding ways of making my life more efficient through the use of technology. Or better yet, when I can actually simplify my life through technology.

“Technology is solution in a box, while we are endlessly expansive.”

Here’s the rub. If we adopt technology in all its grandeur based on a belief that it will make our lives better, then why is it that we constantly search for the next app, new gadget, or tech iteration, hoping for something more because we didn’t get it from the last new release. Do the users of the iPhone 6 feel any happier or more connected a month after they began using the phone, than the iPhone 5 users, or the users of the latest Smart Phone? Probably not.

Technology is great, but it’s not who we are. We are life. We are breath. We are a dynamic creative force of nature. We aspire and inspire. We get it right some times and fail other times. We dream. We envision. We hope and we crave.

“When we allow technology to drive our lives…we in fact diminish who we are.”

Technology is a solution in a box, while we are endlessly expansive. Technology helps us do our work more efficiently, and at times more enjoyably, and it can also take us from the very thing we most want and crave in life, to feel connected and to feel that we’re doing work that matters.

Technology is the carpenter’s hammer, the painter’s brush, the farmer’s plow. It doesn’t define who we are. It’s a tool of our trade.

When we allow technology to drive our lives, which is to say that we revolve our lives around it, we in fact diminish who we are, personally and culturally. It’s as though the painter would define herself by her brushes, or the carpenter by his hammer. Better to see our lives for the expansive creative expression of who we are and let the tools of our trade serve us, instead of us serving the tool that technology is.