Forgetting Your Phone And Remembering Your Life

Tags

cell phones, chaplaincy, mental-health, pastoral care, psychology, spiritual care, spirituality, technology

I am not going to make this a lament about life being all wrapped around having a device that has all the information we could need.  Rather, I want to highlight how it is amazing the powerlessness we feel when we are without our phones.  Perhaps we could look at the oops day as a potential time of reflection.

By Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

 

Have you forgotten your phone anywhere lately? Accidentally left it behind somewhere, until you realised you “needed” it? And it wasn’t there?

(I just did).

It’s amazing how much daily living can be kind of woven through this little device. Pixellated inside it. So seemingly handy. And yet…

When you’re without your phone, are there other parts of your life that you’re more with?

If you forget it, do you remember you?

(And what might that tell you?)

 

When you dive into your phone, are you plunging yourself into somewhere other than right where you are? Somewhere other than here, where your life is actually unfolding around you? Are you more “over there” or “lost in your head” than “just here”?

And, if so, is your phone sometimes a sort of anti-mindfulness device?

It’s an interesting thought…

So why not experiment with it all a bit?

Instead of automatically disappearing into your phone when you’re next in a waiting room or a train (and potentially disappearing from your very own lived experience in a way), what might it be like if you took a moment to deliberately forget it. If you chose to remember you instead?

Just here.

Inside these few fleeting seconds of wherever you happen to be, which can never come again.

Maybe sometimes connection isn’t just about texting or talking or surfing, but just being.

And maybe sometimes that’s worth remembering…

.

Text copyright: Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.