I Have a Question for You about Your Phones

I have started a new book, and I’m looking for a little Thoreau in my life. I’ve been looking, I think, for years.

Forever ago, maybe ten or twelve years, I had a semester’s worth of students at San Jose State memorize the beginning of Walden. I went old-school on them and had them recite the passage to the class. I told them at least that way when they graduated, their grandfather could ask them what they had gotten out of their four years in college, and they could recite Thoreau. I told the kids that maybe their grandfather would, in his surprised delight, give them fifty bucks.

Of course there was always the chance that the grandfather would think being able to parrot some dead white guy’s words was a complete waste of time and would walk out of the room with his fifty bucks still wedged firmly between the folds of his wallet.

Life is full of risks.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

Cell phones were beginning to be a real presence in the classroom, and I thought some good old-fashioned memorization work might help remind my students that studying was, hello?, more often than not about what was between the pages of a book.

I was trying not to lose my students. It was such a strange feeling to walk into a full classroom and to have it be silent because everyone was staring at their phones. I had students tell me how lonely they were because they were not making friends at school. It’s hard to make a friend when he or she is wearing earphones.

Anyway.

I heard the psychotherapist Esther Perel say on a podcast that if you are in bed with someone and the last thing you touch at night and the first thing you touch in the morning is your phone, you might want to rethink your actions.

I sleep with my phone. I touch that thing all day long. I’m surprised I don’t have little phone babies. I check my phone so often you’d think I was waiting to hear if I’d won some epic contest. I am addicted to likes and hearts and responses. I am addicted to seeing how many people read my blog posts. I am addicted to the feeling that I need to be available to anyone except for the 1-800 people who call me and leave messages in a language I do not understand. I am addicted to being able to look up something as soon as I wonder about it. I am addicted to knowing how many miles I walked each day. I am addicted to being able to listen to a podcast if my head starts feeling polluted by my own thoughts and I want to change channels. I am addicted to taking pictures. I am addicted to posting them on Instagram and then having long scroll sessions where I look at other people’s pictures.

I got so used to the upward push of the infinity scroll, the finger movement became something my body craves, like walking. It’s like my heart and my soul slowly drifted out of my body and I didn’t notice because almost all my attention was on what can I see next on that smeared glowing screen.

I don’t have spirituality. I have Verizon. I don’t have to check in on how I feel about things because I can just check my phone and see how many likes I have. I can not think about my life because I can go onto the world wide web and think about everyone else’s.

I would rather talk to you via text than have coffee with you because, with text, I am in control. I can say I have to go at any moment. If you annoy me, I can put you in my pocket.

I am increasingly lonely.

I feel weird.

I am here at Spirit Hill Farm in Sebastopol in part to change my life. I do not want my phone to be my most significant relationship any more.

I came to this place because I wish to live deliberately.

To front only the essential facts of life.

I have a question for you: would your life be different if cell phones did not exist? And if so, how? If we were back (if you are old enough to remember—and, if not, try to imagine) to the time when the phone came with a wall attached to it or was attached to a wall by a cord would your life change?

I have another question: How do you move to a minimal relationship with something you have incorporated as deeply into your life almost as much as your own breath? Your own sense of self-worth?

How do you break up with your phone? How do you work, make calls to people, and not feel you have a pacemaker made by Apple always in hand?

What does it mean to be connected these days? To whom are we, are you, am I, connected? And why?