A meditation on smartphones

I usually take a week away in May each year to go to a small family run resort for a week of writing and visiting with friends in the Haliburton area. This year, I decided to stay home, and focus on writing from my home office. In order to simulate the solitude and silence I would get in a writer’s cabin, I decided to turn off my smartphone from 9am to 5pm each day. I was astonished at the effect that had on me. Just knowing the phone was off for that period of time instantly gave me a boost of inner peace and calm. Like most other folks, I was used to looking at my emails, You Tube feed, and the CBC news app a lot during each day. I was wondering why turning the phone off had such a profound effect on me, when I read a paragraph in The Inner Bonding Guided Journal. Inner Bonding, by Dr Margaret Paul, was written in 1992. I had read it many years ago and learned from it, but then saw that in 2024, Dr Paul and an associate Dr Chopich put out this guided journal. In the section, Three Pillars of Health and Wellness, the first pillar is Nutrition which they say equals anything you ingest, so it will need to be digested. They write: “This pillar is primarily about nutrition, food and healthy eating, but can be anything else we consume or have to process with our physical/emotional/mental body, like substances, environmental phenomena (polluted air), noise.. And let’s not forget technology, screen time, and social media consumption!” (23)

This description of what Nutrition is stopped me in my tracks. WOW! When put that way, of course, what we view via our smartphones is something that we ingest and must also digest. This takes time and energy. When I decided to turn off the phone for 8 hours in a row, immediately, this eliminated a source of input, and that meant the need to process and digest was eliminated too. Again, WOW, when I consider the instant transformation I experienced- going from mild inner agitation and emotional fatigue to inner peace and calm.

Simply put, I didn’t realize how much of an effect smartphone use has been having on my state of health and well-being.

Have you ever tried a similar experiment? If not, and you would like to experience more inner peace, I invite you to experiment with turning off your smartphone for the length of time of your choice, to see what happens in your inner world. Like me, you might be astonished by what you discover!

PS I am making really good headway on More Tent Pegs, and if things go well, I think I will be able to plan a fall book launch! Enjoy this beautiful late spring, and may you have a great summer of fun and rejuvenation!