THE REAL CONNECTION
While driving back from work ,the quirky advertisement belting out on the "Desi" radio grabbed my attention, “Aaree - tumne mujse shaadi kari hai ya phone se?" ( have you married me or the phone) yelled out an irate spouse! It was an interesting ad for a website which left me smiling. I shook my head as if a message had just hit home.
Many of us”technoholics” will agree that if given a chance to bring one thing on a deserted island, without a blink of an eye, we would grab a cell phone!
In this technological era of instant and incessant communication, it’s hard to imagine a day without a cell phone. The idea of a phone being used primarily for talking and texting seems antiquated. The perpetually upgraded smart phones have changed the ways of communication and have replaced our many other needs, making our lives not only comfortable but also self -sufficient.
From the morning alarm to e- mails, headlines, weather, traffic, social news, bank accounts , shopping, eating, entertaining, exercising, goggling ,gaming, and a million more other uses; these smart phones with the user friendly apps can cajole us into using them all day long.
The predicament however is, that the seemingly utilitarian phone can quickly turn into an impulsive habit and eventually into a cell phone usage addiction! While it would have been fine to make the cell phones an extension of our limbs if we were living in a deserted island, but the fact is that we can't!
So, when your child wants your undivided attention to hear him out while your mind goes wondering to see what’s the latest trending Facebook story, or when your spouse tries to look in your eyes during a conversation and your eyes keep hovering over the new e-mail notifications that just popped up, or when you impulsively dig out for your phone instead of savoring the taste of asparagus lime soup at lunch with friends, or flash the iridescent screen-light in the middle of a movie, that's the time to get that impulsiveness in control!
Not that paying attention to these small moments can make or break one's life, but in a small way, it empowers you to keep the mind focused, to be in the moment and to be a better manager of the electronic mayhem that we confront in our everyday life.
To give myself some freedom from the increasing dependence on the phone, I challenged myself to keep the cell usage to a minimum and feel the difference.
It was not an easy task, but being a mindful observer of oneself was an interesting insight.
There were small changes that I initiated like kicking the cell phone out of my bedroom and setting up a regular alarm clock. I wasn't grabbing the phone first thing in the morning anymore! Browsing with awareness of the time and responding to the mails, texts only during the work hours, consciously keeping the evening hours phone free or leaving it home when going out for a walk, were the small subtle changes that made a big difference. It gave me that extra down time while saving my energy resources.
Keeping the cell phone at bay gave me a strange relief of sorts, like getting down from a roller coaster of going in and out of two worlds -being present in the virtual world and in the real world at the same time!
My mind could feel the calmness of living in the actual moments and not being overflowed by an array of random thoughts that kept sprouting with the constant flow of information. It paused the button of an overused activity -just so I could sit back and nourish myself from other sources.
And for all the while that I abstained from using the phone -nothing, nothing really happened that demanded my immediate attention! Nothing out there in the virtual world was more important that a chattering stroll with my daughter, or listening to chirping birds with my eyes closed or tending to the rose buds, or just breathing and being alive.
Just like many other choices we make that needs mind control, like eating , exercising or other addictive habits, keeping the cell at an arm’s length was an interesting insight. Less distractions with the virtual world makes room for more interactions in the real world -and making those real connections with real world is what is called having a life - a real life. I got mine back -did you?
Just like many other choices we make that needs mind control, like eating , exercising or other addictive habits, keeping the cell at an arm’s length was an interesting insight. Less distractions with the virtual world makes room for more interactions in the real world -and making those real connections with real world is what is called having a life - a real life. I got mine back -did you?
