THE UNCLAIMED MOMENT

When I was a kid, being bored was practically a full-time job.

I'd lie on the living room floor watching the ceiling fan go around, then check the refrigerator to see if anything new had shown up in the last eleven minutes. It never had. Maybe some Tang, or a half-open pack of Chips Ahoy we'd stuck in there because, for reasons nobody could explain, we liked them cold. Or I'd sit in the back seat while my mom ran into a store for "just one thing," which was never one thing. No phone, no music, just me and the window, fairly sure I'd die of boredom before she got back.

I didn't. None of us did. And I think those empty stretches gave us something we didn't know we had until it was gone. We had room to think and wonder, and plenty of time to watch an ant drag a crumb three times its size across the driveway and root for it like it was the Super Bowl.

Now we can't stand an empty minute. We pull out the phone in the grocery line and while the coffee brews. At red lights too... I'd like to say no, but I've seen enough on the road to know better.

I saw it with kids in school, too. Screens everywhere: phones, laptops, tablets. A few years later I see it even more, and not just in classrooms. Some mornings I walk into my own kitchen and find my kids eating cereal and a bagel, staring at YouTube Shorts like the breakfast is going to eat itself. And I can't really blame them. They grew up watching the rest of us do the same thing.

I don't think we've lost the ability to pay attention. I think we've let too many things fight over it.

For fourteen years, my calendar ran meeting to meeting to meeting. I'd come up for air just long enough to check my phone in case I'd missed a text or an email, then go back under. Weekends weren't much different. I checked that phone a thousand times a day, and I can't remember a single thing that was so urgent it couldn't have waited until Monday. I thought a full calendar meant a full life. Mostly it meant I never sat down.

My work looks different now. I sit with one client at a time, people who need my full attention, and I give it to them. No juggling, no sneaking a look at a screen while someone's talking. It turns out I'm a lot better at one thing at a time than I ever was at twenty. Most of my unclaimed moments used to belong to my phone. Now some of them belong to the person sitting across from me.

Most mornings I walk Rosie and Benji before the neighborhood wakes up. Some days I leave the phone home, and I start noticing things. I can hear my shoes on the pavement. A kitchen light comes on down the street, and the first bird starts up like nobody told him what time it is. The sky changes so slowly you'd miss it if you weren't looking.

Nothing big happens. That's kind of the point.

The Psalms say, "Be still and know that I am God." It doesn't say be busy and know. It sounds easy until you try it.

I pray the rosary most days. My mind wanders and I lose count, and halfway through a Hail Mary I'm wondering if I put the garbage cans out. I figure the Blessed Mother has heard worse. But I keep going, and something settles. The problems usually stick around, but the noise around them quiets down a little.

I haven't figured this out. I still reach for the phone more than I'd like to admit.

But tomorrow Rosie and Benji will drag me to the same bushes they've sniffed four thousand times and act like it's the first time. The sun will come up over the rooftops, and that bird will be up too early again.

And I'd like to be paying attention, even if the dogs are only interested in smelling yesterday.