We live an illusory life. In our society’s economy of speed, our food, fashion, and friendships are conditioned by structures intent on hiding and avoiding anything that might cause friction in our lives. Preparing my own lunch, for instance, requires forethought and planning. It is far easier to eat out. And, recognizing that I have limited time to consume a meal, it is more efficient for me to go to the drive-thru. This way my meal-time can be reduced to 15 minutes or less, from start to finish. I can also multi-task by scarfing down my lunch while driving and/or checking messages.

The illusion, here, has nothing to do with nutrition. McDonald’s and Chic-fil-A are not pretending to provide me with a balanced meal. The illusion is one of pleasure. Our speed economy conditions me to perceive that the hot food from the drive-thru is pleasing. My belly is full. I can keep going. All is well. Except that this myth my body has been habituated to believe is restructuring how I perceive the truth of life.
What does this mean? How we consume anything conditions what we desire to consume.
I love to eat out. What I love about eating out, however, often has little to do with the food I’m eating. While I am intentional about where I eat and what I order, the better part of why I eat out is because I don’t want to do dishes. I don’t want to go through the trouble of throwing a meal together, going to the grocery store and then having to clean up after preparing the meal. I say this while recognizing that I actually enjoy cooking and I enjoy the food that I prepare far more than most of the food I eat when we go out.
When I order food from a restaurant or a fast food establishment, what I am really seeking is a few moments without friction in my life. Maybe it’s been a long day. Maybe I had an early meeting and didn’t put my lunch together. Perhaps a co-worker simply says, “Want to grab a burger?” My weakness! Whatever the case may be, the real desire beneath my disorder and craving is a longing for something pleasing that is not preceded with any sort of pain or friction.
The trouble with our patterns of doing ordinary things is that it is our small, micro-habits that condition how we perceive and thereby relate to everything.
There have been numerous books written about fast food and how detrimental it is to our health. While this has never really been a secret, and while I echo these findings, my concern with fast food and other aspects of our economy of speed has more to do with how it’s shaping our understanding of the world and each other more so than what it may be doing to our waist sizes.
In our global society of trade and consumption, what we have continually moved toward is a pattern of life without resistance. We want everything to be easy, and by easy we mean that we want it to come without challenge or headache or too much effort. We certainly don’t want any pain involved in finding or achieving what we want. Leadership and entrepreneur guru, Donald Miller, talks about this as it relates to website development. Everything needs to be easy to find and clear. If people are burning calories to find the information, says Miller, you’ve lost them.
From a marketing standpoint, this makes complete sense. It also speaks to our collective, low-level attention span that is looking only for what I want in the moment, rather than seeking to understand or know what is really there. Our patterns of speed and efficiency have crippled our faculties of attention. As our attention has declined, so has our awareness of what is real and true and life-giving.
The other low-hanging fruit next to the fast food industry is computer and cell phone technologies. If anything has disabled human attention in the modern world, rewiring brains toward distraction as a way of life, it’s cell phones and computer screens.
We are all addicted, too. Just try leaving your phone at home and let yourself feel the terror of being without it. See how long you can go without touching or looking at your phone for a day. If it's visible it has your attention. If it’s on your person it has your attention. More than anything else in the world today, cell phones are ruining our capacity to be present in the present. The illusion of connection that these devices provide is re-patterning our sensibilities to believe that we are actually communicating with each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are at best engaged in intersecting monologues.
Once again, there is much research and writing on this matter. I am not alone in my analysis and others have written far more intelligent insights on the subject. What concerns me here is how these devices, especially our devices with screens, are entraining our hearts and minds to external reward patterns that subvert our humanity.
What are the things in your life that compel you to seek reward and pleasure as something external, rather than recognizing your inner worth as a child of the Living God, whose kingdom is within you? What are the habits and patterns, in ways big and small, entraining your heart and mind toward distraction? What do you need to receive a transformed heart and entrain your life to aliveness?
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