On Putting Down The Phone

Went to sleep, last night, in a bit of a weird way. I left my phone downstairs, charging on the charger, and tried to rest the old fashioned way — by simply closing my eyes. It was an interesting experience, if only because I wound up tossing and turning for what, at times, felt like hours. It might have actually been hours, only I wouldn’t have known, since it is not like I had access to a clock or anything. Imagine what the watch industry has gone through, dealing with people who used to buy watches but now are content to merely tell the time by looking at their phones (which are always by their side).

The thing about going to sleep this way is that for centuries, this is how it has always been done. It is only in the last few years, arguably the last ten or fifteen, that people have had access to phones, which they could take into bed with them and look at for hours before they drift off to sleep. I wondered, laying there, how my life might have been different had I been able to look at a phone all those years, growing up, when my mind was still developing. I thought about my daughter, who is a toddler now, and how she sleeps, without the aid of anything, rather comfortably I might add, no blanket or pillow. Each night I lay her down and she drifts off to sleep with the only thing in her head the thoughts that she is at that point having. What is she thinking about, I don’t really know.

But it’s all useless, this stuff. It’s not like when I go to sleep and I am looking at my phone that I am really learning anything new. I am browsing the…