Can You Remember When? – Stuart Segall

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There’s something quietly profound in this moment, in this scene that speaks to my heart. It is me, it is a child, absorbed in the earth’s textures, surrounded by blooming life, unaware of the digital tides that shape our world.

I heard someone speaking the other day, that “we are the last generation on earth that knows what life was like before social media”. Now, this is not a lament for technology, but an elegy for unfiltered presence, for the silence that once held us, for wonder stumbled upon in gardens, creeks, and conversations unrecorded. In my counseling, I see this becoming a lost understanding: the art of being, without broadcasting. We seem to be losing the sacred rhythm of noticing, the slow unfolding of awe.

To be among the last who remember life before social media is to carry a bridge in our bones, between solitude and saturation, between the blessed hush and the curated scroll. That child, head bowed toward the soil, reminds us that meaning is often found in the unnoticed, the unshared, the deeply felt but never posted.

Before we were profiles, we were presence. And maybe, just maybe, we still are. I remember the silence that held me. I remember wondering, a wondering that wasn’t curated. I remember conversations unrecorded. For me, I am still that child, bowed toward the soil, looking up in my heart, listening for the sacred in the unnoticed.

There is a kind of holiness in the unshared moment, in the way a leaf trembles in the wind, in the way dusk settles or the sun sets, without applause. These are not content; they are communion. They remind me that my attention is devotion, and that my devotion does not require display.

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it…” —Jeremiah 6:16. A call to remember what was sacred before algorithms, paths worn by presence, not performance.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin…” —Matthew 6:28. Jesus invites us to learn from the uncurated beauty of nature, blooming without striving.

We are invited to return, no, not to a past, but to a posture. To look around, then look up. To let the soil speak, the lilies teach, the skies proclaim. To remember that the sacred is not lost, it is simply waiting, in the quiet, to be noticed again.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” —Psalm 19:1. Creation speaks without hashtags, and its voice is enough.

Contributing to many of the resources offered by Plain Truth Ministries, including the CWRblog, Stuart Segall writes from the state of Washington.  He has spent most of his adult life counseling, encouraging, inspiring and uplifting others.