Dear Z.,
There are few items on my list of potential letter themes for you more uncomfortable than my relationship to my little black mirror, murderer of mysteries, Swiss army knife of the gods, my smartphone—especially how it relates to how and why I want to regulate your relationship to tech for as long as possible.
It’s uncomfortable because I am addicted to my phone. Like most humans who possess a smartphone, I engage it in odd moments—when I’m waiting for the dog to poop, or I feel awkward in line at the store. At work, I pull it out if I have a random thought about a thing I want to look up. More often than not, I forget the thing as soon as I’ve tapped my passcode.* No worries, though; a million things scream for my attention, aiming to capture and profit from it for as many miliseconds as possible.
Sometimes, when I’m overwhelmed, I pull it out just to avoid that feeling of overwhelm, and end up turning away from whatever is directly in front of me, wanting my attention. Sometimes, that’s been you.
Monkey, I am so sorry for those moments. They are failures on my part to show up in the ways that I say I want to, and even teach others to. I’m working to do better.
The reason that I apologize for those moments is because, at my core, I value the connection you and I have in real time and space than I do the connection—or, rather, disconnection—that my phone offers. This is a value that I want to eventually impart to you, but first must practice myself.
* It takes a moment like this to remember that I am a standard-issue homo sapien, with a brain that has a memory bank and a capacity for attention that eclipses every other known being that has ever lived, except Mama Earth herself.
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I want to tell you what the world was like before the internet existed, before cell phones existed, before texting and streaming and videos and AI and GPS and LED and bitcoin and the rest.
But I could only tell you about my little sliver of experience in the wide world, because I didn’t have much context for what it was like for anyone else. There was no social media, no ability to just reach across the world to engage with elsewhere all the time.
Each morning, I stood at the bus stop alone at the end of Dusty Lane for a long time, til Peggy the redheaded biker lady pulled up in the short yellow bus to bring me to school. I was just there, with my thoughts and the dust and the sky, thinking of the globe at home with the tiny font that I loved to spin and read, its mountain ranges protruding like Braille under my fingertips.
Photos from other countries were sacred, the templates of dreams. I saw so few that sometimes I just watched the sky, daydreaming of cities with names like Sarajevo, Reykjavik, and Bogotá, imagining what they might be like, and what the kids there did with their days.
For what I lacked in knowledge of other places, I remembered dozens of phone numbers by heart, could navigate my way across a city, state, and eventually the country without so much as a few coins or dollars in my pocket, and a notebook and pen in my backpack. Maybe even a paper map. I knew how to move through my world, which expanded slowly as I experienced it in real time and space.
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Today, at the grocery store, you stood up in the shopping cart like a rock climber balancing easily on a cliff. You seemed confortable; the woman who walked by us with a concerned look perhaps was not. You pointed at her and said ‘ears’ as she walked past. Then, “eyes,” and you pointed to your own.
Instinctively, I pointed to your heart.
“boom boom!” you said—mimicking the heartbest—which I mistook for ‘open’, and this emerged:
“Open eyes, open ears, open heart. Boom boom!”
We repeated it slowly a few times, and took off to find fermented seaweed.
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I remember driving up to Sandia Peak at midnight with my friends in high school. We wandered in the dark woods at the top of the big mountain for an hour or more. Some of us were scared. Admittedly, it was a difficult place to get lost, but if we had gotten lost, or hurt, or whatever, no one had a phone to call for help.
I remember a deep feeling of safety in my body that night as we walked through the woods. The soft darkness turned the trees and ground plants a dim shade of white, and my eyes darted for every footfall and twigsnap and giggle. Maybe it was all very dangerous and maybe we were just alive, walking through the woods near a cliff so epic it could be seen for a thousand miles square. Over the crest, the glittering city lit up the endless sky like glowing embers pulsing.
This memory lives in my body more vividly than the visions and insights of the hundreds of psychedelic journeys I’ve experienced, and even other amazing moments since that night, where I was distracted by my phone, or someone else’s selfie-taking, or whatever else presented itself to challenge my ability to be present.
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The world I described above was not altogether better than this one. Humans did shit things to each other and the earth then, too. Individuals just heard about it less, or through hyper-filtered media, which allowed us to focus on what was right in front of us—which wasn’t always cupcakes and marmalade, but the heartbreak I felt for folks in Bosnia, Colombia, or Rwanda in the mid 90s—wars and genocides I read about in the newspaper, felt much more distant, even ickily more romantic, than the heartbreak I feel now for folks in Palestine, Sudan, Yemen, Congo—which is searing, visceral, close.
There is a way that tech can help us feel more connected to the world around us; there is no doubt about that. In fact, that’s the business plan.
But if you notice that engaging with devices, platforms, content—whether they’re in your pocket or seeking to be implanted—begins to remove you from your own life, or seeks to replace your experience without your consent, pay attention to that, and ask questions. Always ask the hard questions that linger in your heart.
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I’m not much of a rule-follower or a rule-maker, but one I live by is this, told to me circa 2005 by a man called Brimstone:
Don’t wear tech on or in your body. Your body is yours, not theirs. Your thoughts and feelings are yours, not theirs.
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”Phone.” You said the word tonight, clear as moonlight, on the way to bed. I left you for a moment at the bottom of the stairs as I went to my office to retrieve my device. Your mama had mentioned playing ‘binaural beats—deep sleep’ as you went down the other night and, her being away tonight, I thought it might make the going-to-sleep process easier.
Your capacity for language is expanding by the hour now. The impetus for me to slow my swearing aloud has been strong for months; now, it feels essential, albeit made easier by my recent gutshot of playing Dr. Dre’s 2001 with you in the car. (I tried, but just couldn’t justify the content with the beat anymore. Sorry, Doc.)
We listened to Brother Ali instead, which I accessed—no doubt under your keen eye—on my phone, as I drove.
I love you, Z.
i must but i cannot give up this phone, it has buried its tentacles into all parts of my life
Yes. Presence is the thing that matters most. I appreciate the way you write about your awareness and I share some of the challenges you mention. It’s a new level of practice to be with Z and remain present to him (with his wanting to see and also mimic me), while navigating the world as we do with our devices. I find I’m limiting the number of times I grab my phone for any reason, including taking photos of him! Humbling.