A Notice Moment – From the Field

Today I listened to a TED Talk, something I do on a fairly regular basis. I enjoy learning a new thing or two, picking up some little morsel of knowledge that I didn’t have when the day began.

Sometimes those morsels are interesting.

Sometimes they are useful.

And sometimes they stop me in my tracks.

Today was one of those days.

According to the speaker, around 8 billion people in the world now have access to a cell phone. At the same time, around 3.5 billion people do not have access to a toilet. And of those, around 400 million people still practice what is referred to as “open defecation.”

Now, I haven’t dug deeply into those numbers yet. That will come next.

But this isn’t a Stewardship Guide. It’s a Field Note—a Notice Moment—and Notice Moments often begin before we have all the answers.

We notice something.

And then we ponder it.

My immediate reaction was pretty simple:

In 2026, there is something deeply flawed with the overall system.

Think about it.

As a global society, we have developed the technology and infrastructure necessary to put a sophisticated communication device into the hands of billions of people. A person can potentially stand almost anywhere on Earth holding a small computer capable of communicating across continents, accessing vast amounts of human knowledge, taking photographs, watching videos, conducting business, and connecting with people thousands of miles away.

Yet billions of people apparently still lack access to something as basic as a safe and sanitary place to go to the bathroom.

I’m not suggesting that the problem is simple. I’m sure it isn’t.

Nor am I suggesting that cell phones are somehow the problem. They aren’t.

What caught my attention is the contrast.

There is also a certain irony in all of this that is hard for me to ignore.

I suspect that a fair percentage of those billions of people who have both a cell phone and a toilet routinely use the two at the same time. Apparently, sitting on the toilet and scrolling through a cell phone has become something of a modern human pastime.

Which makes me wonder if we’re looking at this problem all wrong.

Maybe the world’s cell phone companies should get into the toilet business.

After all, they have already figured out how to get their products into the hands of billions of people around the world. Perhaps it’s time they started working on creating a few billion more cell phone use stations.

I’m kidding, of course.

Well…mostly.

Because beneath the humor is a serious question about priorities. We humans are remarkably good at creating systems that can manufacture, market, sell and distribute things people want. Yet we seem far less successful at creating systems that ensure everyone has access to some of the most basic things people need.

Why is that?

I don’t know.

At least not yet.

But now I’m curious.

And that is what happens with a Notice Moment.

You are moving along through your day when something catches your attention. Maybe it’s a bird you’ve never noticed before. Maybe it’s something growing alongside the road. Maybe it’s a pile of stuff in your basement that hasn’t been touched in twenty years.

Or maybe it’s a statistic you hear while listening to a TED Talk.

You notice.

You stop.

You ponder.

And sometimes you begin asking questions that you weren’t asking five minutes earlier.

This particular Notice Moment is going into my mental compost pile for a while. I need to learn more about sanitation, infrastructure, poverty, public health and the numbers themselves.

But the question that first popped into my head isn’t going away:

If we can figure out how to put a cell phone within reach of nearly everyone on Earth, why haven’t we figured out how to do the same thing with a toilet?

I don’t know where that question will lead.

But I noticed it.

And now I’m curious.

P.S. If you happen to be reading this while sitting on a toilet and scrolling on your cell phone…well, I rest my case. 😂