On my way to work this morning I realized that I forgot my cell phone. Some of you may have read that sentence and not thought much, but some of you may have gasped! Had I not been running late I would have gone back to get it but I decided to keep going and see how my day would survive without it. By hour two I thought I was going to go crazy! I recently got an iPhone and I love everything that it can do. All I could think about was the hundreds of people that must have been texting me (reality: just a few), all of the emails I was missing out on (reality: only one important one telling me my new shoes were being shipped to me), and all my favorite apps that were not being used. I literally sat at lunch wondering what to do?! If you can't play Angry Birds, what in the world are you supposed to do with your free time? I have become so dependent on my phone that it is now a vital part of my life.
I am old enough to remember the days before cell phones. We could only talk to friends from our home phones, which we had to share with everyone else in the house. We actually had to talk on the phone - there were no texts. When we left home, there was no way to contact anyone until we arrived at our destination. It is amazing that any of us survived. Then the first cell phones came out and they were so big that it was not something we just put in our pockets. I remember our first cell phone as a family. It was a bag phone and we would all fight over who got to put it in their car. It was big, bulky, and so cool! Dad said it was for emergencies only but I would call my friends just to say that I was talking to them from my car phone (how cool was I?) Now they are so small, can really do anything we want and are pretty much a necessity in life. I think about my little neice and nephew and how they already know what a cell phone is and what to do with it (mainly because they see their mom talking on it so much!). They will grow up in a world where a landlane is pretty much obsolete. They will definitely laugh at the fact that our phones used to be connected to a cord.
Now to get to my point. I posted on facebook earlier today that I left my phone at work and I wondered how I would ever survive. One person commented and said that they had to tell me something. Of course it was horrible to have to wait hours and hours to find out the news instead of getting it instantly on my phone. However another person told me to try and make the most of it. I thought about that and how we all get so distracted with "necessities" in life. By the end of the day, I noticed that it was actually nice to not have my phone. I talked with more coworkers, went for a walk at lunch, and was a little more productive at work (but let's not repeat that last one). Now I am not saying that I will give up my phone - that would be crazy talk. But what I did learn is that I can survive a day without it and in today's world of instant communication, it is OK to not know everything that is going on.
Is there anything in your life that you think you cannot live without? Something you might look at as an essential but it might actually be a distraction. It might be a phone, a computer, facebook time, twitter, or any other technological item. Of course they are not bad things but I challenge you to give it up for one day. See that the world will go on without it and your life will not fall apart. It might even add to your day. My morning started out feeling distraught and panicked but ended up kinda nice not being able to be reached or distracted. When I got home I actually forgot about racing to find my phone - at least for ten minutes :)
Today I am grateful for: 1. Encouraging time at church and being reminded to choose joy 2. A good converstaion with my sister last night 3. Being encouraged at work 4. Sitting outside at lunch and enjoying the quietness 5. A day without a cell phone
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