How many yellow cars?

So we were driving back home this evening and to while away the journey we decide to play ‘how many yellow cars?’, which is a game where you all say how many yellow cars you think that you will see before you get home? The one who is closest to their number wins. Now I am not telling this story because I won (oh and I won ‘how many Christmas trees?’ too, LOL).

No, the reason for it is, that before smartphones and tech, those were the kind of games we all played to avoid boredom, but the avoidance of boredom that involves using your own imagination and then playing something with a group of others is what leads to fun, creativity, memories and so much more than can be offered by a 6 inch glass screen that you are singularly connected to.

Get out of the tech and count yellow cars for a more fulfilling life.

Where’s my phone?

How many times a day honestly do you say to yourself, often in a panicked way ‘where’s my phone?’.

I used to do it often, maybe I was the only one, but I somehow doubt it.

Then how many times do you say the same thing about other items? Like ‘where’s my toothbrush?’ or ‘where’s my ..’. There are no others items whose whereabouts we care about to anywhere near the same degree as our phone.

When was the last time you did not have your phone within a metre radius of you? When did you last leave your house without it? When did you last go a day without your phone? When did you last go more than an hour without checking something on it?

The thing is we have become attached to our phones like nothing else ever before in the history of the human race. I see people almost cradling their phones, hugging them, I would not be surprised to see people kissing them, making like dolls house furniture for them, perhaps even a bedside table bed for them, so they can tuck them in at night.

Yet most of what we do on our phones really doesn’t add that much value to our lives, most of it is shallow, habitual activity, often in search of worthiness, to fit in, to be liked, to feel important.

I no longer want to live a life where I am dependent on a lump of plastic that sucks me into a vortex of shallow, often quite depressing emotional turmoil and angst. We have become enslaved by them and their Apps.

Freedom lies away from them.

Try one week without your phone, or even a day. Try switching off the notifications. Try having it in another room.

See how you feel. Odd, is how you will feel.

But the oddness goes and is replaced by more meaningful things.

Deep life is what we all could enjoy if we weren’t worried about where our phones were.