It's hard to imagine life without our phones, especially cell phones. I'm not that old, but there was a time when we left home without them. Of course, that was because they were attached to the wall. We never even gave any thought to carrying one anyway. This was before the cell phone was mainstream and if you had one you carried it in a briefcase. Or if you were really special you had one wired into your car. If something happened while you were out you just had to be resourceful and figure it out. And if someone asked a question and the table had no idea, we would just look it up when we got home. Oh, how the times have changed.
Now don't get me wrong, I love my cell phone. It goes everywhere with me and is always by my side. It's my camera, my email, my texter, and my weather to name a few things. It makes my life, and I'm assuming yours as well, a little simpler. It makes finding where you need to go easier, and if we need to find out some information, it's right at our finger tips. But I also think it can over complicate our lives. It's made it harder to sit and have a conversation with people at dinner or just hang out in general. I struggle with that every time I sit down at a restaurant. I'm tempted to pick up my phone and see what's up in the world, but that's not really fair to the other person or persons. It should be about those interactions with the people around you. My wife and I love to hike or tube down the river and those times are great because we shut off the world. We turn our phones off or stuff them in a bag and only take them out to snap a photo. Maybe we need more of that in our lives.
Man, this post really has me sounding like an old man, but there are obviously some merits to the phone other than what I've mentioned. The older I've gotten the more I've realized a phone call is an important thing. Especially in the age of texting, a phone call is much more personal. Maybe one day I'll go back as far to write a letter to somebody. Now that would be real crazy. Back to phone calls though, I think it's better to call some one to say congratulations. Or it's better to call and just say, "Hey, I wanted to see how you're doing". Yeah, you could totally do that in a text message, but would it have the same impact? I'd say not really. So maybe the next time you think about sending a congratulations text, or anything of that nature, you could just call instead. I believe it would make an impact beyond what we normally write off as a courtesy text.
P.S. Shout out to all you flip phone people out there living the simple life. May you continue to go against the grain.