By Emily Ferro –
On a daily basis, there are a few things that I always have to check before leaving the house. Did I feed the fish? Did I turn off the lights? Did I unplug my straightener? Do I have my cell phone?
Media Credit: Emily Ferro - Can't seem to disconnect.
The cell phone is not exactly a new piece of technology, and over the years, advances to the design have ensured that most of the people we encounter would give up a landline before sacrificing this small hunk of plastic. Cell phones are now more than a phone, but an instant messaging device, a GPS, a calendar, an alarm, a game console and a link to the world wide web.
It is not surprising that so many people find such a device so necessary. It is more surprising when someone chooses to give it up. On Jan. 31, Yahoo News ran a story about a college student, Jake Reilly, who gave up his phone and e-mail for 90 days. His story is amazing, and nearly enough to inspire someone to do the same.
Unfortunately, doing such a thing is not simply a matter of choosing to do so, but as students at Salve, it is in the university’s policy that we must check our Salve e-mails twice a day. Employers also often rely on emails to relay information. To do everything via mail and memos would simply not do with the impatience of the world today, particularly not for 90 days. But for two?
For weeks, I have encouraged my staff to attempt this. Reilly found that in his time without a phone or internet, he got back in touch with the world. I hoped to find a writer willing to lose the phone for a weekend, or even one day. There were no takers.
To my surprise, I was the one to experience it, and I was an unwilling participant, at that. Last week, my family took a trip to Vermont to take my brother skiing. I was aware that the cell phone service might not be very good, but there was sure to be wifi at the house, and with my new 3G network, I would be connected no matter where I was, right?
Wrong. Oh, so wrong. As my family drove through the mountains of Vermont and the bars of service slowly vanished before my eyes, I found myself completely disconnected. I quickly went through the seven stages of grief: determined denial and a half an hour of wandering the house looking for service, guilt that I would not be able to fulfill all of my newspaper duties while in Vermont, anger that I even bothered coming to Vermont in the first place, sadness over my inability to call my boyfriend before bed, and then the upward turn—I realized that I could sit by the fire and enjoy it without Facebook, then comes adjustment, where my dad and I played Scrabble for real, instead of Words with Friends, and finally acceptance and truly enjoying the time without any worries over possible e-mails, phone calls, or text messages.
I was disconnected, and it didn’t bother me. The remainder of my time in Vermont was peaceful, but there was a mess when I finally got home. I had missed a production weekend, and the stories were left unedited longer than they should have been. It was a scramble to get everything done, but I survived. The peace and quiet was worth the bit of stress. It had been way too long since things were so quiet—no beeping or booping or buzzing.
Though I would like to say that since my weekend in Vermont, I have decided to set my phone aside one day a week, but it would be a lie. I intend to go about my life in the way that I usually do, but always keeping in mind that peace and quiet is just around the corner if I just turn off my phone. Sometimes the best way to connect with the world is to disconnect what we think is really connecting us to it.
