Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom notes that increasingly these days, you can't strike up conversations with strangers next to you on a plane or in line somewhere--because they're all talking on cell phones or have Ipods stuck in their ears: Do we even know how to be at rest anymore? Have we become so addicted to input -- noise, ads, Internet, cell phones -- that being still is alien?
I think about that tall guy at the airport, nodding his head at me, and I wonder if he ever knew I was there. They used to say if a stranger smiles at you, check his eyes. Today you check his ears.
