Catching a moment of fun at my favorite coffee shop in Zurich with my daughter and her best friend.
When I was little, we used to get kicked out of the house to go outside and play. A lot of the time, it was because I’d had my nose stuck in a book for a few days, or my little brother was wrapped up in a video game. I always loved playing outside, but when it came to books, I sometimes had a difficult time tearing away from one that had me in its thrall.
Nowadays, my family and I take technology breaks. No phones, no iPad, no TV. I have to say, sometimes I find this comical, but we live in a world where people swipe left or right to accept a date. We live and die by our phones. It’s kind of crazy the hold that they have on us.
A few months ago, I was on my way home from the zoo with my tired brood. My phone was tucked in the top of the hood of the buggy, and unbeknownst to me, it fell out as I was getting off the tram with the girls. When I got to the post office to pick up a package, I realized that I didn’t have my phone. I hadn’t backed up my phone in a while, so I was terrified that I’d lost months’ worth of photos of our girls and the experiences we’d had over that timeframe. It wasn’t the phone that was the problem- it was the data.
Data. Our lives are controlled by it. Our social media feeds and search engines have everything we are, aren’t, or could be interested in. We are so connected to so many things that I think we’ve all become a little disconnected. It’s why restaurants and dinner parties now often have “phone drop zones” and why there are countless tech-free retreats. There’s some yogi out there cracking up, because honestly, why would you ever bring a phone into a yoga retreat in the first place?
I hope that better balance is achieved soon. Dinner with friends doesn’t need to be fully documented (and I’m happy to say my girlfriends don’t tend to pull the phones out during dinner unless it’s to check on kids or take a photo to prove that they changed out of their yoga pants for the night). Yes, I recognize the hypocrisy of a blogger with an active Instagram feed saying that we don’t need to document or share everything. I do. But I can also say that I put the phone away on the weekend when I’m having family time. I take photos if it’s something special, but I check-in when I’m with the amazing people in my life, rather than check-out. It’s important. I feel like there have been times where I’ve recognized that I’m doing things I wouldn’t want my children to do, and they’re watching me. Or I realize that I was so checked out, I missed something special. I think when we are always “plugged in” we lose the ability to be in the moment, to enjoy the now. Sure, it’s fun to video things and show people the cool thing you’re doing, but are you taking the time to enjoy it, if you’re recording the entire thing?
Take time to be present. Snap the photos, but then put the phone away. Play. Enjoy the beautifully plated food. Laugh. Observe. Enjoy life. Nurture the relationships in your life, not your relationship with whatever game of the week Facebook is peddling. We live in a world where extremism is giving us a full-frontal everywhere we look.
Balance doesn’t need to be the white whale in our lives. Snap photos and take videos of the great moments, but also experience joy in the now. Keep the phone out of your bedroom, and if you’re the kind of person that stares at their phone all day, schedule time without it. Someone once told me that it takes 21 days to make a habit. Find a tech balance that you feel good about, so that you don’t feel consumed by it. After all, shouldn’t the purpose of technology be to aid us in feeling more connected, not less?