Ten years ago you would have seen people my age clowning on people who complained about other people being on their phones all the time.

I remember this one illustration of a parent shielding their child from a rain of smartphones by using a book as an umbrella. I can't find the post or the original illustration right now, but I remember people scoffing at it.

I remember people sharing an early 20th century photograph of a bus full of people with their noses in their newspapers, using it as an example of people ignoring each other before the era of smartphones.

It was this photograph, if I'm not mistaken.

And now many people around my age (and younger) are ditching their smartphones, getting flip-phones or "dumb phones," searching for analog replacements of various apps, collecting and interacting with physical media again, etc, etc.

I think a lot of it has to do with how much technology & social media have become more depressing over the years, not to mention invasive. The people in the photo above might have been ignoring one another in favor of being engrossed in the paper, but at least the paper wasn't demanding their attention at every moment (nor stealing their data) and once they were done reading the paper, they likely moved on with their day.

But beyond that I also think a lot of us realized that the social media that was supposed to connect us was (more often than not) making us angry and lonely, and that spending every moment of free time in front of a screen was not living.

But my parents were birders, so hiking we did go.

And about a mile up the trail, a woman came rushing up to us, clutching her binoculars to her chest. "Come quickly," she said, with a British accent. "You have to see this!"

This is what birders are like. They are as excited about a life bird as any fan would be spotting their favorite celebrity. You have to see, you have to.

So my parents rushed off with her, and I plodded along behind them.

To find a cluster of Brits huddled in a bird blind, staring at..

A blue jay.

A goddamn blue jay.

And I was a teenager, but I knew better then to mouth off in front of my mom. So I nodded, and smiled, and bit my tongue, until an elderly man looked at me with tears in his eyes, and said, "Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?"

And I stopped. And looked at it. The way they were. As if it were new. And damned if they weren't right.