The Sound of Silence

I have been thinking about my cell phone lately. A lot!

It is seriously like one of my appendages. If it is not attached to me, it feels like something is missing. If I leave the house without it, I turn around and go get it. I use it for everything:

1. To call peeps

2. To text peeps

3. To email peeps

4. To track my steps

5. To look up stuff

6. To take photos and videos

7. To fact check

8. To order stuff

9. To pay for stuff

10. To navigate

11. To check what kind of plants I am looking at

12. For endless everything, etc, etc.

But the deal is why? More and more I am feeling like the phone is really getting in the way. Hold on, it is not like I am gonna get rid of my phone. And I am never going to drive anywhere without it (I cannot even count the number of times I have gotten lost in the past!) But there is this phenomenon happening that I am not sure I like.

Let's take photos for a great example. Used to be that I took a roll of film, got it developed and then kept the good ones and put it in memory albums. Now I take hundreds of photos and most of them stay buried in my phone. Oh sure, I post them, I send them to my friends and pull them up when I am thinking about them. But it is kind of making me feel like, "See what I saw! See what I did!"

The other thing is though, that no matter where you go, or whoever you are with, if someone gets a text message, they/I look at it. Even if I/they try to ignore it, it dings twice, so our minds are saying, who is texting me? So if I/they don't look right away, it is still bugging us. So we look whenever there is a free moment.

Has it come to that? That whoever is on the other side of that text is more important than whatever we are doing in the moment? Let's face it. It makes us feel good to have people who want to talk to us. Makes us feel wanted, right? But if I am with someone who just has to look at their texts no matter what we are doing, it makes me feel less important. I have forced myself to not let it bother me anymore, but I feel that I am desensitizing myself; making myself numb. I also feel like most people feel like they are not being rude if they are talking on the phone in the grocery store, or the bank, or where ever they are. It is the norm now....to be rude.

Clearly I cannot make people give up their cell phones. And I don't want to give up mine either. But there has to be somewhere in the middle. What I do know is that it is making me, personally, obsessed with texts and emails and photos and internet access and everything else that comes with. Since I am the only one I can attempt to change, then why not give it a go.

So I am gonna leave my phone in the car. Unplug. It's a start.....I am gonna try for the sound of silence.

The Sound of Silence - taken by my trusty cell phone!