Being Vigilant in a Distracted Age

It was 5:30am, in my mother’s hospice room, when I realized that I had been there for three hours already. Given our different natures, my brother and I were playing to our strengths: he’s the night owl, so he would stay up until 2:30am. I am the early bird, so I would go to bed after dinner and wake up at 2am to relieve him. There I found myself, alone in the room, with only the sound and rhythm of my dying mother’s breathing; three hours into another day of the vigil.
Embracing the Vigil, Becoming Present
In this age, we are not a people amenable to watching and waiting. Notifications ding us and distract us every waking moment. The technologically savvy of us know how to filter these bells down to only the ones that we want most to ring (or the ones we most need to receive). Yet even we still have those that toll at inopportune moments. We are chronically distracted, and blind to the consequences. Each chime rips us out of the moment that we inhabit, and we become disembodied; useless and ineffectual to those around us. This chronic distraction robs us of the single most important gift we have to give to others: our presence.
I have seen remedies proposed for this distraction elsewhere (such as mindfulness), and some are easy enough to do. For example, in our family, we try and practice one “screen free” (or, really, “screen reduced”) day per week on Sundays. But I have yet to find anything so inoculating to the relentless cacophony of beeps and buzzes as the practice of vigilance. With each passing moment, knowing that it draws me closer to the anticipated (and dreaded) close of the eight year ordeal that has been my mother’s struggle with cancer, I find less and less enjoyment in — or need for — the distractions, and more significance in the moment.
The messages can wait. The news does not matter.
I am here, now. We are here, and we are waiting. We are waiting for a moment that we cannot predict, no matter our supposed capacity or technological prowess or medical progress. Vigilance, particularly in the face of death, reminds us of our limitations. We don’t have to set a notification to alert us of its coming, but it will come. We don’t have to take any action to solve the problem; it is insoluble.

From Vigilance to Retrospection
The waiting is not pointless, however. At the vigil begins the retrospective. I like to think of this remembrance as looking backward in order to move forward. As the end approaches, with it comes a flood of memories in the waiting. I remember old trips to Fort Ligonier and Niagara Falls that I have not recalled in more than a decade. I cry when I recall a begonia that I brought home as a trimming in 1st grade, and that my mother lovingly tended for 27 years (as only a mother could). A hectic life leaves little room for remembering like this. Why would I distract myself from this precious, healing time?
While nothing shines so bright and stark a light on our lives as death, the practice of vigilance has highlighted for me the importance of waiting in other, more mundane moments. What have I been missing as a father, husband, brother, and son because of this permeating distraction? Some diversion is necessary, of course; to paraphrase Hume, the mind cannot always be occupied with weighty things. However, have I become glutted on diversion? If I am honest with myself, I have been consuming junk moments of life; believing them to be nutritive, when really they are starving me of meaning.
Growing in Vigilance Through Practice
My encouragement to others is: adopt vigilance as a practice. It need not wait for moments like the death of a loved one to begin. In fact, it probably should not. That is like showing up to a marathon without having run a single step.
Some concrete steps to take toward developing a healthy practice of vigilance may include:
- Wait Actively and Patiently: When you find yourself sitting on a train, or in an airport lounge, or standing in the coffee line, you have found yourself in a rare moment of repose and pause. These are the times when you can exercise patience and wait quietly. Don’t reach for the phone. A day will come when you must wait, and there is nothing you can do to accelerate the process. Sometimes these respites can be scheduled or structured; for example, when having morning coffee. More often than not (especially for parents) we have to find them at other times of day, and they won’t necessarily be planned.
- Perform Regular, Small-Scale Retrospectives: During those brief moments of waiting, think back on your day so far, or even the last week or month. Consider the good, and the bad. Think of old friends, or lost loved ones. Look backward, during these breaks from the daily race, so that you can move forward and be present in the moments to come. Alternatively, adopt meditation as a practice and seek to clear your thoughts entirely to provide space for later retrospectives. Consider waking up 30 minutes earlier and committing that time to reflection (and not feeds or inboxes).
- Plan Annual, Larger Retreats: while developing a regular practice of vigilance relies on day-to-day small-scale retrospectives, there is even greater value in taking a longer time away from the daily race of life. Maybe it is a weekend or week, but a focused and intentional time of contemplation and silence is vitally important for translating retrospective time into planning for the future. This can seem something of a luxury, especially to parents of young children, but that speaks to exactly how valuable and precious (even essential) that time away in silence can be.
Be vigilant, active, and present in waiting. Soon, you’ll find the moments are full, and not empty. The distractions that previously filled your time were in fact what drained it.
