Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Ringing Phones

Jim and I went out to dinner tonight.  About half way through the meal the familiar strains of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young start going through my mind:  “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”  I probably went for years without the words to this song going through my mind – until the age of the cell phone.  Now they come into my mind all the time.  Like tonight at dinner. . . .

Jim and I are quietly chatting and eating our meal when a phone rings.  For a minute it only registers as incongruous.  My mind asks itself: Why is a phone ringing in a crowded restaurant dining room?  And then I remember, it’s the age of the cell phone. 

But the phone didn’t just ring.  The person at the next table, who was sharing her dinner with two children and an older lady I assumed was her mother, answered.  For some reason the person on the other end of her phone didn’t answer back right away, so the lady felt she had to ask three times, “Who is this?”, before hanging up.  I could feel myself becoming crazed!  It wasn’t long after that another lady at a table nearby also took a phone call, and left her husband to eat his dinner in silence while she chatted away.  All of a sudden, there they were again, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, with their familiar strains of: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

Before cell phones, we would have thought it BEYOND rude to ignore the person on the other side of the table at dinner so that we could talk to someone not even in the same room, sometimes even when they refused to answer back!  We would just have loved the one we were with!  Do you know what it says to me when a person interrupts their time with me to respond to a ringing phone?  It says: “Sorry, but this call is SO much more important than YOU.  I have to take it.”

I often meet people for some informal counseling.  Usually these meetings last for an hour or an hour and a half.  Do you know what I do with my phone?  I shut it off, or I leave it in the car.  If I have to take it with me, I keep it on vibrate and only CHECK the name of the caller if I have to do so.  If I suspect it’s not important I silence it.

When you’re with ME, I want to convey that you are the most important person in my life at that moment.  So, like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, I’m going to choose to love the one I’m WITH and not the one on the other end of the phone.

When I’m with YOU, I want to feel that I have YOUR full attention.  I want to feel that I’m the most important person in your life at that moment and your time with me has value.

So, the next time I meet with you, you can take that call, but it had better be IMPORTANT, or I just might grab your phone from your hand and submerge it in the nearest liquid available.  You’ve been warned!  :)