The Light Phone has Arrived
Thoughts from my notebook
My birthday passes like any other day of the week, minus a few remembrances from my household and two of my friends. All of my extended family forgot (again), but I’m not exercised by that anymore, as obligatory happy returns of the day have lost their luster. The most obvious hole in the day was the absence of my dear friend Sara’s annual celebratory handmade card. How I miss her hugs!
That birthday morning, I began the day with a Zoom meeting with like minded critical thinkers discussing how we use technology in our lives, ironically enough using technology to address the various issues of using too much technology. I resonated most with the relational problems that I have experienced because of the keyboard’s absence of social and facial cues, but I also related with others who decried a loss of attention, concentration, and the ability to enjoy expansive spaces of creativity and quiet. This was to me the best gift I could give myself: not simply a recognition of the problem, but a community of people who also desire a richer life outside of their devices. I left the meeting inspired and understood, full from having taken part in a thoughtful conversation, even amongst strangers.
I then took myself out to lunch, and while waiting for my fried chicken sandwich from the local bakery, pulled out Wendel Berry’s little book on why he doesn’t use a computer. I found it amusing, especially the responses he received as even I could see how people missed his point entirely. But who could blame them, tech-induced cognitive decline and all (kidding!!).
After eating, I visited a local nursery, bursting with overflow parking as the spring season kicked off. I had no other plans other than to wander about, but…plants happened. As they tend to do.
For example, I stopped upon seeing a few roses with photo tags I recognized. Could it be? I peered closely, and sure enough it was the very same variety I had planted at the big house, one of many in the landscape I was sad to leave behind and have since been unable to find. Happy birthday to me! I thanked the Lord, praising Him who knows even the very specific and lost variety of a plant I would be thrilled to come across again.
Back home, I enjoyed a short nap, a half hour of reading, a touch of gardening, and a meal I didn’t have to prepare. Simple things, nothing unusual in and of themselves. At my age (55!), every day I am alive feels like a birthday of sorts now, and I have far more gratitude for the daily gifts of time in the Word, the smiles of my children, and a good night’s sleep, none of which requires my scrolling.
Sometimes I struggle with living out those values I hold most dear. A slow life, for example, how does one actually have a meaningful pause when the rivers of everything and everyone else is rushing around me? What does “a slow life” actually mean, in fact, other than “please, not so fast”? I am weary of trying to keep up.
At the moment I write this, on paper, with a pencil, I am outside on my Mexican blanket, my bare feet onto the grass enjoying our second fake spring. I can see my tomato starts taunting me in the corner greenhouse, tempting me to plant them into the gardens a fortnight too early. I study the grass instead. Lovely grass, with clover and dandelion and beetles and flies. Felix, the old orange tabby, has snuggled up by my legs. Two of my children have been swinging on the playset for an hour at least, singing tunes from an old movie I cannot remember the name of….Lion King or something. The cognitive decline bothers me, how words disappear.
I set my left hand behind my head; I can hear the second hand ticking on my wrist watch. It is oddly comforting. I brought a book outside, but am content to watch the clouds pass by. I am doing well thus far on the reading challenge (one book every two weeks). I just started another, after throwing away one whose agenda was so obviously anti-God I threw it away into the garbage bin lest anyone else come across it.
I want to be free of distractions from my Slow Life yearnings, but I wonder how lonesome it might get, how people will reach me, and if they would even want to.
Maybe the contact list doesn’t need to be so large. Maybe I need less people in my life.
4:20PM
The frogs have started croaking. I love the spring frogs so much. I would never have known their concert commencement if I were not outside, lying lazily in the sunshine. I’m wondering why being an adult supposedly means I can’t purposefully do nothing and be outright bored on occasion. As much as I hate feeling dull and sleepy, it actually feels good right now as I don’t have anywhere I need to go. Of course, there are dozens of odd tasks I could do in the house or around the yard; there will always be dozens of odd tasks I could do instead of resting. Tonight will be easy: I will pull out a frozen meal for supper, pick salad from the garden, and I think I will bake cookies for dessert. Baking cookies doesn’t sound like work at the moment.
The neighbors have some sort of machinery going. I wonder about them. Do they ever take time to just sit on the grass and watch their children play? I wonder if this is something I could ever put on a list: do nothing for an hour, literally nothing of production at all, just breath and pray and watch and listen and feel.
Even so, as nice as it is watching squirrels and listening to hummingbirds zip by, I do itch for my smartphone, left inside. I tell myself I would only use it to take a photo or two, to remember this afternoon, knowing full well I’d somehow find myself endlessly scrolling and texting and “keeping up with the news”. Time would fly. It would be lame. I would, in the end, feel pretty pathetic. Still, it would feel good to scratch that itch, like picking a scab in order to keep the wound oozing for no other reason except that it’s there to pick.
A late birthday present arrives. The box has various phrases on it such as, “It is a choice” and, “Appreciate your time, life is right now.” I resonate with them all. I open the box and see the small Light Phone, a simple rectangular device that few people might find attractive or worth spending money on. To be sure, if I didn’t utterly struggle with wasting time (that is, my life) with technological devices in general, perhaps I’d have enough discipline to “set boundaries” around my smartphone.
Alas.
There is a scene from the movie Fireproof where the main character decides to kill his sin rather than try to make friends with it. Struggling with pornography, he rips the computer from the power cord, lifts and throws outside, and smashes it completely with a baseball bat, a defining moment of killing his idol and salvaging his faith and marriage. But that was just a movie. It makes me utterly ill to think of using a hammer upon my smartphone (the cost! the waste! and what is wrong with you!) but perhaps that only underscores how addictive and unhealthy this kind of tech is for some people, the kind of people that can’t just simply shrug it off and be ok with “that’s just how things are in this day”.
“And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire”. Matthew 18:9
Everywhere I go, I see a lot of the tops of people’s heads, bowed down and their attention sucked into the vortex of unceasing trays of Turkish Delight. Perhaps I am not the strange one. Perhaps I need to find a hammer.
It can be lonesome, I admit. It seems most human interactions, at least here in America, cannot happen anymore at all without a personal pocket-sized computer at the ready, assuring its owner of his or her readiness to be reached at any moment. Must we be accessible at any moment? Any moment at all?
And what about wonder? Most times, it is straight to the browser we go to find an immediate answer. To wonder takes time, thoughtfulness, quiet, even boredom. To wonder means the possibility of never knowing The Answer.
I find phones to be uninvited guests, (hopefully) mostly silent beacons between us, assuring the other person rescue should the conversation or company get too boring, or if a bit of silence descends for a moment. I also find it incredibly rude when the ringer is on and there is constant dinging, but I do understand the weight of being available for potential emergencies should they arise. I just wonder if that weight is a reasonable burden or even a false sense of security when we justify it as such, all day every day, and for some, even into the night watches. Some (most?) people never turn off their devices at all.
But what a lot of wasted human opportunity for relationship building simply for the possibility of a rare and unlikely “what if”. Better to leave your phone invisible and turned off, and to give the person in front of you your full attention, in my humble opinion.
I’ve no idea how this will all turn out; perhaps I’ll end up a hermit(ess?) who lives in the woods with only squirrels and my own creative endeavors for company. I imagine I’ll have to sit with the emptiness of losing some contacts and struggle with the uncomfortable loss of dopamine hits for a time. I’ll have to record my receipts on my desktop, write down driving directions ahead of time, print out boarding passes, and use a separate camera and calculator. I won’t be able to thoughtlessly check my email multiple times a day, or quickly “add to cart”, “like”, “follow” or “subscribe”. It will take me longer to respond, which means my texts may actually be more thoughtful, and I have no intention of setting up a voicemail, because voicemail does not serve me as well as text and email.
What serves me best is face-to-face conversation and, in no shock to anyone who knows me, snail mail. I’ve had countless letters from readers (my address is in the back of PRESENT), and from them, a small handful of loyal and faithful people who are actual friends now, who continue to communicate with me through our mail boxes only because we are unable to beat a narrow path to each other’s doors in person. They long knew this day of downsizing my digital devices were coming.
Halfway through menopause and ten years after writing that book, it does seem certain paths are diverging before me. I think I shall choose the one lined with nettle and dandelion and tall grass, the perhaps leads to a stile to climb over and, if I’m blessed for such, ends with a friend or two waiting for me with the kettle on. Or, perhaps, by my next birthday, I shall become such a friend at the end of the road, ready to give my full and undistracted attention to those the Lord sends to me.
We shall see.
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P.P.S. Please tell a good friend how much you love her, today.