As a child, I spent long lazy sum­mer after­noons lying on my back, gaz­ing at the sky. I loved to watch the rivers of puffy clouds stream over­head, sail­ing across a vast ocean of deep blue. Child­hood sum­mers offered lots of time for sky gaz­ing and day­dream­ing.

My friends and I enjoyed an unstruc­tured child­hood. Our days weren’t crammed full of self-improv­ing activ­i­ties like gym­nas­tics or bal­let classes. Our moth­ers weren’t soc­cer Moms shuf­fling us from one place or event to the next… So we had lots of time to lie on our backs, gaze at the skies, day­dream, tell tall tales, or imag­ine our­selves as the hero of our own fan­tasy adven­tures.

We played games, rode bikes, walked fence rails, formed cliques (and broke them just as quickly). On rainy days we read books or the lat­est comic books. On sunny days we wan­dered the neigh­bor­hood, explored the nearby woods, snacked on fresh berries or fruits we “bor­rowed” from a neigh­bor’s tree. We had the lux­ury (or chal­lenge) of long hours with min­i­mal adult super­vi­sion. We were largely respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing our own forms of amuse­ment. We returned home in time for meals, or before dark on days when school was out.

We were the pre-dig­i­tal, pre-Sesame Street gen­er­a­tion. TV view­ing was rationed, to leave enough time to do home­work with­out caus­ing World War III to break out between us and our par­ents. There were no videogames or tex­ting vol­leys to dis­tract our atten­tion.

Now that we’re adults, sur­rounded by dig­i­tal devices and bar­raged by incom­ing texts, emails and tweets — com­mit­ted to overly busy sched­ules and work/life oblig­a­tions — those lazy blue-sky after­noons are far behind us.

Some­thing has been lost in the process…