Have we lost contact with the tangible world? Look around. What do you see? Screens! Information gleaned through hand-held electronic devices. Through those screens we love to look at animals, our friends, mouth-watering foods, faraway landmarks, natural wonders.

What about going out and seeing/touching real live animals? Having coffee with our friends—face to face? Or hiking up to the top of Half Dome….using our own bodies to do the work?

The late playwright Sam Shepard had the same idea:

“What’s most frightening to me right now is this estrangement from life. People and things are becoming more and more removed from the actual. We are becoming more and more removed from the earth to the point that people just don’t know themselves or each other or anything.”

Don’t just look it up on the Internet—make that recipe you love. Travel to see (and touch, and walk into) an old cathedral, remote village, vibrant marketplace.

Just don’t sit there and think that your iPhone’s app is a real communication link with what Shepard called “the actual.”  Go outside and inhale deeply. Reality cannot be digitized.