Ad nauseam, I hear an ad that asks if I am tired of Google tracking me. Well, it is not just Google, my friend. It seems like we are tracked everywhere we go, with every move we make.(The song is going through my head right now.) We miss the freedom of “Be back home before the street lights come on.” Recently I sat and talked with a group of ladies who quickly recited four or five ways their husbands could track them when they were shopping. I was amazed. Then when I thought about it, nothing they mentioned was out of the ordinary. Holy Cow! What kind of world do we live in? Well, we live in a super safe world. We maintain contact, minimize risk and reduce our worry load with all our devices.
As I thought about the motivation of these husbands tracking their wives, I realized it came from insecurity, fear, lack of trust as well as love. Our obvious knee jerk response to being tracked is to throw out all our devices and move off the grid. But that is not realistic.
If you have ever been a parent of a teenager, you know this issue from the other side. We worry about what they are up to and if they are safe because normal teenagers usually don’t tell us what they are thinking or why they are thinking it. As a parent we have doubts about what our child is like when we are not around so we resort to tracking them with technology because this world IS a dangerous place. We wish we understood what motivates them and we do not intend this to be punitive. We only want the best for them and it is our job to protect them in this world.
So what if we did with our spouses and close family exactly what we wish our teenage kids would do? What if instead of becoming more sleuth and secretive, we become more transparent and leaned into it? By transparent I mean honest. What if we told our loved ones the moves we make before we make them? And what if we shared our motivation behind our choices in a conversation instead of forcing our loved ones to depend on technology to figure out what we are up to? Of course that would involve taking the time to sit and talk, which is a whole other subject. And to set an example for our kids we need to be transparent ourselves. Ouch!
Here are a few ideas to get us started.
- Post some not-so-flattering honest moments of your day on social media.
- Tell a loved one about a really stupid thing that you did that makes you anxious when you think about it.
- Call or text your love one before every impromptu choice you make in your day.
- Make sure your next of kin has access to ALL your accounts.
- Let your significant other know what you are buying and why before you make your purchases.(This is not the same as asking permission to do so.)
If this list makes you very uncomfortable, you are not alone. I believe that transparency is the key to freedom in our technologically advanced world. Take baby steps to be more transparent and I believe you will find that with honesty comes peace.