Special Series - Connected to Life | Rabbi Aaron Kotler

[Music] decades before the internet smartphones even cell phones I was learning in Earth by the great he shared with me with great humor a story from the time when he would come to Lakewood as a b he was learning in K Berlin and he would come to speak with the Zar and learning and the zeta's glasses were very smudged they were in the Bas Mish they were standing by the beam of talking and learning and rabaran took off his glasses as he often did and he needed a safer from the back of the BMS and he ran with tremendous energy to the back and Ritz grabbed that moment and he figured rash's glasses are dirty he'll clean the glasses they were smudged so he took the Z's glasses and he pulled out the corner of his TI shirt and he quickly cleaned the glasses and put them right down Barron ran back to the Beamer with the safer and put the glasses back on looks through them sees there's something wrong because now you can see clearly takes them off and B shows me how the Zeta smudged up the glasses and put them back on and Bitz said to me then and this was not in the G of kadia and tahy they would rabar andit went in B medish what was the re even going to see already but it was together he says to me a person only has to see what he has to see you don't have to see what you don't have to say and I thought about that then a lot and Through the Years about being a normal person what does that mean to be a normal person you go out to dinner with somebody you go out to dinner with your spouse with your child you're speaking normal people were people who were not constantly distracted in life that used to be an inherent part of normality somehow we've accepted that you can be having 11 conversations at once doing 15 things at once multitasking all over the place and as if that's going to leave you a shred of semblance of normality of stability of focus when we put away the distractions of Technology when we clear out Minds from them we're able to be normal people we see what we need to see we think about what we want to think about and we're not pulled all over the place now people will say look how much good there is I could keep in touch with the moive in or to I could watch the news I could see what's happening doesn't really bring joy doesn't really bring connection it doesn't bring presence it's just like a machine gun statico of stimuli hitting your brain over and over and over again pulling you all over the map and really what we lose I think when I fall into that what I lose is the ability to think what more precious aspect of life is there than the ability to think to be a normal human being was able to be connected to the present connect to the people around you connected to the Past aware of your surroundings not bumping into lamposts because you're so absorbed in something else for us the challenges of life are so Elemental as a from yid our opportunity is to just be normal I flew on a plane last night I was on a red eyee flight and I sit down and Kadar B there's hundreds of people on the airplane not a single one looks up not a single one is aware I'm sitting a foot away from a guy a Korean guy he doesn't look up for four hours on a flight it's as if there's no human being next to him just completely absorbed in a smartphone and I look around me and I see everybody on the airplane completely absorbed in their stupid dumb devices forgive me for saying that unaware of the world unaware of Life unaware of anything around them than being fed being passive stimulated by song by music by images by news but really not connected to life our opportunity as a fromy is to be a normal human being who is connected to life connected to ourselves to our children at the table to our friends to our business meetings that we're in to our shum whatever we're doing to be connected to it in a very very real way at BMG we used to have a stickle of minig we'd go out for team dinners with the staff so the minut was the first person to whip out his phone he has to pay for the whole dinner it worked very well and of course everybody would laugh when we remind ourselves of the rule but really the purpose was to keep us present to Keep Us Alive to keep us connected to the experience of of true [Music]