I’m just back from a trip to Europe where I experienced the ancient stones and brooding magnificence of the Scottish Highlands. For the first time in a very long time, I was email-free, after surrendering my Blackberry when I recently left a job (They had to pry it out of my fingers on my last day). No incessant buzzing and blinking. No compulsive message checking. Nothing. And nothing was good.
On my flight home, I realized how much being unplugged had impacted me, as I watched a planeload of people scrambling to power up once we landed. With a phone, that would have been me too. Without a phone, I caught myself actually thinking—about life, about my trip, about a book I have been meaning to write…. And that’s when it hit me: The Phone-Free Me really does think more and is more present—instead of constantly occupying every fragment of time digitally, and being elsewhere mentally.
Lest I sound too pious, let me be clear: I can’t wait to get a new iPhone this week and get plugged in again. But something keeps ringing in my head—words I heard faintly keening in the wind around ruined Scottish castles, echoing in the worn graveyards of the MacGregor Clan, lapping in the dark
waters of the Loch Lomond: “Unplug… Absorb… Think…”
On my flight home, I realized how much being unplugged had impacted me, as I watched a planeload of people scrambling to power up once we landed. With a phone, that would have been me too. Without a phone, I caught myself actually thinking—about life, about my trip, about a book I have been meaning to write…. And that’s when it hit me: The Phone-Free Me really does think more and is more present—instead of constantly occupying every fragment of time digitally, and being elsewhere mentally.
Lest I sound too pious, let me be clear: I can’t wait to get a new iPhone this week and get plugged in again. But something keeps ringing in my head—words I heard faintly keening in the wind around ruined Scottish castles, echoing in the worn graveyards of the MacGregor Clan, lapping in the dark
waters of the Loch Lomond: “Unplug… Absorb… Think…”