Not so long ago, there were actually phones connected to wires in our houses. When you wanted to call someone, you called a line that many had access to. You would pick up the phone and “hope” that nobody else in the house was privy to your conversations. Or, you stretched that wire around corners, under doors, and hid in a closet to have that private conversation you waited all day to have. For the most part, those were simpler times. But as you know, times have changed.
Change starts with having a cell phone; not just a cell phone, a state of the art “handheld device.” When you think about it, if you don’t have a cell phone these days, you are either an outcast or you ride a horse and buggy around on the green pastures of Boondockville, USA. Usually, the user is smarter than the phone itself. But in this day and time, I beg to differ.
We have become a society premised off of the “I have to know now” philosophy. And I’m not talking a few minutes or even a half an hour… the answer and the responses have to be NOW. From business endeavors to personal communications, the now is here and now. Here we are, faces planted down swiping a touch screen device to get that up to the minute tidbit of information to satisfy our knowledge desire…..for the time being at least. But when do we take a break from our smart phone and when do we draw the line?
From what I can see, there are no breaks. I see more people texting and driving or having that phone affixed to the ear and doing the old “duck down” move because they think that nobody sees them on the cell while they are driving. And then you have the individuals that just don’t care; they are on their cool cell phone or handheld device and they want you to see them on it. When I was taught how to drive two key values were instilled into me: Speed and distractions are the main causes of accidents. I guess these values don’t exist anymore or people don’t care to let that driving time be just driving time. I sometimes question the intentions of those select few……
The line has to be drawn with the whole driving and everything situation we are currently faced with. A few years ago I heard about a woman who was texting and driving. She blew a red light at an intersection and killed a 12 year old boy on a bicycle. Both the community and the family of the boy were crushed. Do you draw the line then?
So when it comes to you, your cool cell phone, and your own sense of self…..what do you do? There are too many tragedies that have happened and more that will happen if we don’t realize that we used to live without any of it. Remember, the phone used to be connected to a leash in our homes. But it seems we are the ones being connected to the leash and walked by our phones now.