When was the last time you went a few days completely without your phone or any internet… on purpose?
Yes, I just said “days” and “on purpose”. For me it was a few weeks ago. This particularly shitty Saturday at my job pushed me to the point where I simply handed my phone to my husband and said, “Do not give me this back until Tuesday.” then walked away.
The expectation that you should always be attached to a phone, available and ready to respond immediately is now the norm. Society is on permanent heightened alert. Stay tuned.
My advice as Momma Stace? I say a person needs “down time”. A break. No, not a weekend on the couch with endless video games or binge watching the latest. No, when I say down time I mean real time to rest, gather thoughts, find balance, perspective, replenish etc. Shake off the dust. Step off life’s spinning wheel for a few. Get back to the real you.
Down Time.
Giving yourself permission to take the necessary time to make real decisions and not respond based solely on emotions. Allowing yourself the needed space before internal and external pressures mount into a full eruption.
It seems as though having that real, heart to heart, gut wrenching debate with yourself of, “Should I?” as a concept and basic lifestyle rule, has been obliterated on the information superhighway. No soul searching! No stopping to pause!
You are to Answer NOW! Respond NOW! Why don’t you have your phone?!?!
Our gadgets hum. The roads hum. Our refrigerators hum. Never-ending humming of useless information coming at us from radios, tvs, computers. So much humming we are becoming numb.
Uncomfortably numb to the hum.
Selective hearing engaged at all times. Multi-task or die. Keep on keepin’ on. Long term this can’t possibly be good for our species. We already see the harsh effects…streamed continuously online.
So why does the mere thought of walking away from your phone cause anxiety? Reasons, excuses really, running rampant through your mind…
See kids, back in Momma Stace’s day, no one had this problem because everyone left the house without a phone. We did it all the time. Moms yelled when it was time to come inside. We walked or rode bikes sometimes miles to find out if a friend could hang out much less hear any gossip. Yet somehow, we managed and lived to tell the tale.
I say this to you as Momma Stace. I’m not that old but having lived life in both the worlds before and after Apple Computer, technology has come with blessings and curses my loves.
Please explain to me how these phones are not a corporation inspired, greed driven, mass produced addiction. Now, all photos and music and memories are controlled and stored. Conversations have become shortened into terse texts messages. Someone else’s lame words and phrases repeated so many mind-numbing times, stuffed into your subliminal memorization you have no choice but to sing along. Line after line of repetitive, unwanted, throbbing, beating into that dizzy, smoke filled bar being passed off as your brain. The room spins as it gets smaller and smaller. It’s out of control!Somebody open the door and let some fresh air in here!
Momma Stace’s advice is to step away from it. Shut everything off. Get you some down time. You will be able to actually FEEL the silence. I promise, quickly, you will realize you are still able to sustain life without your T-Mobile sized appendage.
There is enormous power in shutting everything off.
In a world like ours where visions of every horror imaginable can be found at lightening speed, in vivid color and sound, where literally every human on earth of any level of intelligence can comment on any subject with no regards for the truth, decency or respect to any set of universally recognizable morals, yet behave as if every single one of those thoughts, desires or demands matter, the off switch is an act of pure sweet rebellion.
Turn the control switch off.
Somewhere in the silence is the answer, your answer. Find it in the down time. You need some down time.
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