📱 The Phone and the Silence

The phone. It's still a challenge to ignore that little device. And yet, I do. Not always, but more and more often. I've read enough about its addictive nature, and I watch with dismay what it's doing to us human beings.

In the morning, I sometimes scroll briefly through official news sites, then quietly delight in a stream of animal or music videos on Instagram. After that, the phone goes on silent. A tool for being reachable, nothing more.

Recently, I spoke with a young woman in her early twenties. She told me she can't sit still for a moment—she immediately gets bored out of her mind. Just sitting on the couch, simply being with herself, is almost unthinkable and unbearable for her. Silence is foreign to her. She fills every free moment with podcasts or favourite music. Even while exercising or gardening.

We found common ground in that last bit—gardening. That, we agreed, is wonderful. Gently, I suggested: "Why not try gardening without your phone, next time?" She looked at me as if I was making a hilarious joke. "Seriously? Just... without anything?"

I told her how I love the scent of earth, the feeling of digging my hands into the soil, the birdsong, or simply the wind. She shook her head. "No," that would just bore her. And when I said I never get bored, that silence isn't empty or scary to me but full and rich, she looked at me like she'd seen a ghost.

"I just go crazy from my own thoughts," she said, "and that's why I need music or a voice in my ear."

Of course. Everyone has their own path. Every change or innovation begins with resistance and that’s precisely what I consciously try to stay away from. After all, I gratefully make use of the world the smartphone has opened up: more accessibility, more information, more connection, simply at our fingertips.

But somehow, I thought of Toon Hermans. Long before the age of smartphones, he wrote about "the dumb screen" and "the stupid telephone."

Toon already knew what we're only slowly beginning to admit: that we sometimes drift further away from the world, precisely because of all the things that are supposed to connect us.

Buttercup
How is it that the buttercup in the grass
Waves to me so lightly,
It’s because we stand much closer
Than you might think,
Much closer to the meadow, the tree, the plant and
All things bright
Than to that dumb screen and that stupid phone.