I spent last Saturday morning dragging limbs from a tree from behind the Church into the backyard (always fun to have some physical exercise). A few hours later I plugged my phone into the charger and the unthinkable happened…
it didn’t charge!
Actually I knew what the problem was. Some dirt or other debris had fallen into the charging port of my phone, so the cord wouldn’t go all the way in. Unfortunately no matter how hard I tried the debris couldn’t be either found, or cleared away.
Thankfully a Church member was able to help me on Sunday clear the debris out properly. But between Saturday and after Church Sunday I wasn’t able to use my phone hardly at all.
The interesting thing is I didn’t really miss it
It’s no secret that phones (and social media apps in particular) make it easy to become “tethered” or constantly connected with technology. So whenever somethings doesn’t work properly like a smartphone, we almost immediately have withdrawal symptoms.
However once the panic of the situation passes, we realize that technology isn’t needed as much as we thought.
Thankfully I’ve been taking a step back from sites such as Facebook, instagram, and twitter lately so the sting of not having my phone wasn’t as strong as it could have been. But Saturday made clearer the understanding that we don’t need technology as much as we think we do..
Does technology like smartphones make life more enjoyable? Absolutely! But sometimes we must forcibly untether ourselves (experiencing the ensuing withdrawal) to understand we can live without it.
Johnhwilburn.org 