Relationship with the phone - Part 2

This is a continuation of a previous post: Reclaiming boredom - Part 1

“When phones were tied with a wire humans were free”

This quote touched me deep, and I kept trying to understand why. After some month the answer came to me. In the first article about the relationship with the phone I wrote how I want it to be a tool. Forgetting one important detail, the phone is nowadays also inevitably a mean of connection. Another way to interact and connect with the world and other humans. And this has a lot of pros and cons.

The pros are of course that we can reach out to almost to anyone in the world owning a phone at any time. The con is that almost anybody in the world owning a phone can reach out to us. It means that it’s not so easy to disconnect from people, updates and news from the world. Even when we intentionally want to disconnect. My brain got addicted to it in a way. I want to know, I want to know what’s happening, I want to know if something is happening. Otherwise I’m afraid I’m missing out. I’m afraid someone might need my help and I am away, doing something else. I’m afraid I someone will get disappointed not getting an answer on time. I want to unlearn those fears. My work nowadays is mainly about unlearning things. And this is my next task.

Just today I had a conversation with my brother. I come back from the shop, and he asked me, “did you get the garbage bags? I wrote you a message”. “No”, I answered, “you write me on messenger and I do not get notifications there”. I already turned them off. So I didn’t buy the garbage bags, he was disappointed. But it’s ok, sometimes I will unintentionally disappoint people. I cannot be available all the time to all the means of communication. If someone has an urgent subject, they will know how to reach me. They will call me, call me a few times until I respond. That’s urgency, a true one. The rest of information can wait. Yes. But wait until when? I still don’t know very well the answer to this question. I definitely will keep checking my phone every day, more than once. How exactly do I want to use my phone to connect to people? I’m not sure yet. I know I really enjoy leaving the house without my phone. There is a certain lightness about not worrying to be contacted by anybody. But what if there is an emergency? Well, I feel I want to trust my intuition. I will feel it. And there is only one way to find out. It’s to actually try it.

I want to decouple my consciousness from the phone device as much as possible and useful. And I will keep on experimenting. Another way is to just turn off the internet. Then I will not get any messages other than SMS and I will not get any phone calls other than cellular.

I feel the process if already unfolding for me and I have more mindful interactions with my phone. After turning off almost all notifications, I am already not getting interrupted by the incoming updates. The next step for me is to get even more relaxed about it altogether. It’s to get to the point that I check my phone with purpose and without fears.

Future Actions:

• Go out of the house without the phone more.

• Turn off phone communication more, to be more time offline, only available by cell phone.

• Develop more mindfulness about using the phone, further reduce “just checking social media” while picking up the phone to do something else.