Cocooning is a term I use for people who remove themselves from the worlds surroundings while remaining physically present. Your classic cocooning teenager will be wearing sunglasses/shades, enormous headphones connected to an mp3 player, hood over their head, and be engrossed in cellphone activity. These actions form an invisible shell force field rendering the occupant oblivious to the activities around them. Thus, they are no longer a part of society. Worse still, when society bothers their activities the cocoonee often becomes uncouth.
Withdrawing from the world is creating a society unable to communication face-to-face. Youths mutter barely a word to each other during school hours but once home on the internet they’re plugged in like Stephen W. Hawkins. Communication rains out via email, text, social networking and connects a single cocoonee with potentially hundreds of thousands of others. That same teen that couldn’t string two words together when you asked for advice at your local department store is likely to be a virtual chatterbox within his bedroom dungeon.
Kids these days…
We can hardly blame them. Today’s youth are hedonistic ragamuffins who believe the world revolves around them. They are selfish, sullen, morose little tosspots.
Case and point, three days ago on the bus I approached a teenage male to inquire of the time. He looked at me like I was mental and continued to play some tennis video game on his phone. Fortunately for him I am an experienced life expert and refrained from overreaction. I did, however, strangle him in headlock so vast in compression that it would defy the laws of modern civil engineering.
To illustrate my point I stole his watch.
But I can’t throttle every teenage cocoonee in this world. I have clients who require my time as a life expert. They pay for my time; teenagers generally do not.
I teach my clients to put themselves first. I also teach them to put their fellow men and women first as well. To paraphrase – you are number one, and so is everyone else. And if we are all first, we are also all last. This is considered revolutionary by my peers and has stimulated much erudite discussion. Applying this to cocooning the lesson is simple- turn your music down, take the shades off, phone on silent, and if someone asks what they time is you fucken well tell them.
So take that lesson forth. We are all human – even in the race of life. Be courteous to one another, say a cheery good morning to your neighbour, offer to help a lost tourist, help an old lady cross the street, share your breakfast.
The state of mankind depends on eradication of cocooning and face-to-face communication is the best paraquat. You can’t impregnate with cyber-sex. We may very well become extinct if we do not act now.
Life is a fight so knuckle up.
Franco Skinns
Life Expert
