It’s a funny thing, to suddenly find yourself without a cellphone. It feels like there’s something just out of reach that you’re constantly reaching for, like a phantom limb. When I had to surrender my device recently for repair (bulging battery, long story), I immediately felt the effect: it dawned on me a little too late, I am off the grid. Wandering around, I found I needed to make a call, and was flummoxed. What do I do? I basically ended up negotiating with a Virra Mall vendor to use his P5 landline. Just like in the days before cellphones, I realized.
The phone has become our instant, constant pacifier, calming us as we navigate the churn of day to day. Being unplugged, therefore, presents certain existential questions. You could immediately plug back in again, switch to another device; or you could declare yourself above it all, and try to go offline for a spell. People do it all the time.
But they always go back. There is something compelling about this “other” world, this online existence that seems to have so much validity in our lives now. It’s muscled its way into our sinew, and we can’t just drop it like the Amish. We like its shimmering allure, its otherness.
You realize after a certain point that we’re all now operating on a multi-plane existence (not exactly a “Matrix,” though some in Silicon Valley swear it is already in place), and each plane can seem infinitely expansive: there’s the day-to-day reality on the ground, and then there are all of those castles we’ve built online. Curated shrines, meticulously groomed and maintained. We are invited to live in both of them at the same time, and we’re told the key to linking and uniting them is this device in our hands. It’s a bit like Wakanda in Black Panther: you’ve got your street-level wheeling and dealing down below, and your supermodern, sleek Vibranium world whizzing by overhead. The important thing to remember? One of these two worlds actually exists; the other one doesn’t.
Here’s a thought experiment: imagine you’re in a very foreign environment, a place you’ve never been to or mapped out before. And suddenly you find you’ve got no help from your device. “No service.” In such moments, you realize most of us wouldn’t make very able pioneers, back in the day. Without our devices, we’d probably wander off blindly into a sleuth of bears in the forest within minutes and get eaten. Blazing a trail is not something many of us are comfortable with these days; we constantly seek online guidance, reassurance. We need to know that our vision of our surroundings corresponds to an online version. This is — admit it — kinda strange.
Another thought experiment. Stand in a place that strikes you with inner awe, a connection to something abundantly pure and beautiful — not because you sought out its awesomeness online, or were persuaded by somebody’s Instagram post to visit it; just imagine you stumbled upon it accidentally.
I felt this at Bondi Beach in Sydney one day, standing on a bridge just looking at the waves, taking in the local 180.
My iPhone kept spasming away in my pocket: Viber and WhatsApp and CNN and NYT and FB and IG and whatnot. After a while, I chose to ignore it. Didn’t reach for the camera.
Instead, I breathed it all in. Took a minute to just stand still. (This may not seem like such a long time, but try it; you’ll notice your immediate impulse is to direct your thumb toward the Instagram button. Try to master that impulse.) Within moments, I became cheerfully and passively aware of my own existence in the present, in the “now.” (Our fellow columnist Jim Paredes might call it a “Zen moment.”)
I realized, in that instant, that this life is making me not enjoy such moments, like watching those waves crash onto the beach. Just watching. No need to take a shot. We lack that personal space now; that’s the tradeoff of the multi-plane existence. We’ve forgotten why we needed that personal space to begin with, but here’s why: because it’s OURS. Not the world’s. Not your friends’. Not your followers’. YOU get to experience something first. Enjoy it. Savor it. Share only if necessary.