Question

WRITE A DISCUSSION FORUM BASED ON THE ARTICLE BELOW. OPINIONS AND/OR RELATIONS TO THE STORIES ARE ALLOWED.

ARTICLE:

Get Over Your Selfie

Gazing in the digital mirror, we lose the habit of seeing ourselves as part of a bigger story.

By

Ryan Dobson

The headline made me laugh. " Morning Joe Thinks Kim Kardashian's New Selfie Book is a Sign of the Apocalypse." Yet Ms. Kardashian's "Selfish"—a collection of pictures she took of herself—is no joke. Some enterprising publisher is betting "readers" will pay $20 per to flip through 352 pages of bad lighting and self-absorption.

And if it does sell well, maybe the end really is near.

Another selfie made the news this week for a tragic reason. On the coast of Portugal, a Polish couple climbed over the guardrails to snap themselves with the sea as backdrop. While their two young children watched, mom and dad backed off the cliff and fell hundreds of feet to their death.

What's with this culture of all-me-all-the-time? More important, what's the alternative, and does anyone have a picture of that?

A Facebook timeline goes back to 2007. The timeline for my father, James Dobson, goes back four generations to his great-grandfather. My great-great-grandfather was on his way to kill a man when he was diverted to a tent revival in a small Texas town. Instead of taking a life that night, M.V. Billingham gave his life to God. He left his gun on the altar.

M.V. was unarmed, but after that he habitually deployed a secret weapon. For most of his adult life, he routinely prayed for his son, for his son's children, and for their children to the fourth generation . . . all the way to my dad. Whatever a "selfie" says about a person, this man was the opposite. With a strong sense of "more than me, more than now," more than a century ago, he prayed for people he'd never meet.

Did it make a difference? My family says yes. Among other things, my dad grew up aware of his place in a bigger story. He knew the next leg of the race was his to run; the baton was his to hand off.

Who's going to drop out of a relay like that? Not me. Once I grew up—I mean, once I matured enough to be humbled by his unselfishness—I committed to the intergenerational prayers, too.

I won't say every Millennial is stranded in adolescence, glued to screens, thumb-calloused from texting or unable to think past the end of Grand Theft Auto. But we're losing the habit of thinking past ourselves. As we do, we lose our best selves and our best chances to help shape what comes next. We drop the baton.

While I was dating, before I met my wife, dad would ask me about the women I was seeing. I'd say this woman made me feel good, so-and-so seemed to support me, that sort of thing. My reasons for dating, he told me, seemed selfish. He said, "Do you make each other better people?" Of course, now I see how right he was. Marriage isn't about me; it's about us. And very soon it's us with children.

So page after glossy page of Kim Kardashian in her mirror may ring up dollars for a woman who hardly needs the change, but what's the point of 15 minutes at the epicenter of attention?

As the great writer Peter Drucker said to social entrepreneur Bob Buford : "The fruit of your work grows on other people's trees." When a couple takes the hard road to stay together, when parents can manage a strong-willed child without breaking her spirit, when adults feel the pain in a child's outrage and not a reflex to punish, when families live for more than themselves, when unwanted babies get to the parents who want them, the baton is passed, and the lesson is learned: A great life is less like a selfie, more an album of group photos.