We also need brakes in our lives. Seeing only what is ahead and a life concerned only with running is dangerous. Many sick patients regret a life that was taken up with running to achieve. You need to pause for a while in order to look back. Only when you stop do you see the surroundings and realize where you are going and what you are doing. So Jesus says, "Go to a secluded place and rest a little bit" (Mk 6:31). He reminds us of the importance and necessity of rest.
He recalls the words of a former Google chairman: "Turn off the computer. Turn off your phone. Then you will find people around you."
It is a warning to all who have recently become slaves to the smartphone. Many people are addicted and rely too much on them. News, social media, games, time and place, of no consequence, and in their use, we pass over what we should be doing.
Even more of a problem is that while smartphones allow access beyond time and space, they permit us to forget those who are around us, family and acquaintances. Even when the family is all together, there is no direct communication or sharing. Empathy and sensitivity are deadened and we become like robots— "unthinking human beings" the consequences are the misery and tragedy of dehumanization.
With the 4th Industrial Revolution deepening, smartphones are not an option but a necessity in our lives. Smartphones are now a part of my life, (because there's all the information about me in it), but if we're wise in the use it will be a medicine, not a poison, benefiting all.
At the end of 2019, Pope Francis on the Feast of the Holy Family urged his listeners to drop their smartphones at mealtime and communicate with their families. "In your family, do you know how to communicate with each other, or are you like those kids at the table" In your family, do you know how to communicate with each other, or are you like those kids at the table—each one has their own cell phone, chatting? In that table, there is a silence as if they were at Mass, but they don't communicate with each other."
The Catholic Church together with the other major religious group is participating in the smartphone rest cultural movement. It is an attempt to become less dependent on the smartphone and more concerned with those we deal with daily. The President of the Pastoral Council of Seoul said the purpose of the movement is: "To take a break from your smartphone, imitate the Holy Family, talk to your family, love each other, care for your neighbors, and praise God."
The 'smart rest' cultural movement aims not only restricting the use of smartphones but also emphasizing the positive side of its good use. However, the 'smart rest' cultural movement also includes prophetic efforts to identify and purify certain aberrations such as personal information leakage, privacy invasion, malicious comments, and digital sex crimes, which do harm to the cultures of love and life. Even today Jesus invites us to go to a remote place and get some rest. It is time for smartphone rest.
