"One Picture And One Story Week #86".

Myself @aspiya From #Bangladesh

Greetings Splendid Individuals

Today I am excited to participate in the Interesting contest "One Picture and One Story Week #86 as organized by @suboohi. This challenge is creativity crossed with visual story-telling, a photograph, an image and the story it tells. This is a lovely way to share a picture and a story. I picked a very thought provoking image that resonated with my heart.

^{The picture created by Canva}

Today, the image I’ve selected is worth thousands of words— one that stopped me in my tracks, made me ponders and touched me deeply. As I gazed at it any number of ideas coursed through my brain. I knew I had to tell its story — not just because of a contest, but as a message to all of us who are forgetting more and more the things that really matter.

It is the scene of a modest bedroom. A mother is perched on the side of the bed with her back to her children and her eyes are glued to the screen of her mobile phone. She is that enmeshed, that consumed by whatever is occurring on the other side of the screen, that she misses what’s there on the opposite side of the screen. In her hand is a feeding bottle, extended without effort to where she imagines her baby to be. Only the baby is no longer on the bed. He's turned over and dropped down.

There is the little one, on the cold floor, crying, in pain, helpless. His little body is lying there, scattered and uncouth, and his mouth is open with a mute cry that no one hears. The mother is there but she’s not there in any kind of emotional sense. She is in the room only in body; she is elsewhere in mind in a reel, a chat, a scrolling feed.

What makes the picture all the more haunting is the image on the wall an ethereal, innocent portrait of the same baby, smiling in a heavenly light. It’s almost spiritual, as though the baby’s soul is peering down from the train of the heavens that he rode in on, wondering where the heat of his mother’s love has run off to. That grinning baby stands for what can be a relationship of happiness, closeness and deep emotional attachment. But instead we witness only pain, disconnection and neglect.

This art may be fictional, but the story it tells is all too real. It symbolizes a larger problem of today’s world — emotional detachment in the era of digital attachment. And as parents, caregivers or human beings in general at times, we get so into our devices that we end up ignoring those who are right next to us and depending on us our kids when they really need us.

Motherhood is more than just being present in the flesh. It is, instead, one of mental presence and emotional availability. A baby does not want milk alone; he needs the warmth of arms about him, he needs the security of contact, the love of all those eyes that look down at him.

This photograph shocked me, especially as a mother. I thought of my own child. What if I were ever to allow a screen to come between us like this? What if turning aside meant injuring him? The very idea is intolerable.

This photo is a reminder, a lesson and a warning. Let's put down our phones. Let’s be truly present. Childhood just flies by, and if you miss out, you miss a lifetime