My phone, my crutch


The other day, my siblings and I were talking about our high school. We went to a boarding school in a little known state in Nigeria for our six years of secondary school and my brother had commented on how much better our experience would have been if we were allowed to bring phones. My sister and I immediately jumped on his argument and disagreed, stating that we believed it would've made things really bad. Personally, I have very strong introvert tendencies. I'm more comfortable on my own or with well established friendships and my idea of a comfort zone is a situation in which I don't have to go out and talk to people I don't know or mingle and come up with small talk. The beauty of secondary school (despite all its flaws) and the camps that I was able to attend as a younger teen was that not having a phone MADE me stop and look at the people around me. There was no cushy comfort pillow for me or for the people around me to land on when we didn't want to talk anymore. We learnt to ask questions about the people around us and we learnt when a conversation was over and grew comfortbale with letting it end without awkwardness (at least most of the time).

My brother was saying that if you really want to talk to someone, you will, with or without a phone. And he's right. But I also think there's something to be said about creating that atmosphere. You can't force people to talk to each other, even if you take away their phones. But I think we would be lying to say we cannot recognise how distracting they are. And if you are a regular instagram scroller like me, then it's also a lot easier to be on your phone than it is to have to make formal conversation with someone. It's easier to pick up your phone when the conversation dies down than maybe say bye to the people around you as you leave or come up with another topic. I remember my first day of post-secondary school (the IB). I was a really new student (newer than the other new students cause I had to quarantine cause of COVID). I didn't really know anyone. And normally, I would have had to join a conversation, start one or sit in silence by myself. On this particular day, I didn't have to choose any of these because for the first time ever, I had my phone. And so I stayed in that corner and I scrolled through instagram, probably looking pretty nonchalant and uninvolved to the people around me while struggling with insecurity on the inside.

All this to say... phones aren't evil. And I don't know how else I would've been able to stay in such good touch with friends and family living oceans away during COVID lockdowns without it. But it has been a crutch for me. It has been a distraction for me, to the point that it feels like I can't even be watching a movie without simultaneoulsy using instagram or whatsapp anymore. Having my phone so accessible all the time has made it a lot harder for me to master the art of stillness, something that I didn't have a choice in learning before. But I guess that as we grow, it becomes less a matter of 'we have to and there's no other choice' and more a matter of ' I can choose and I choose this'.

God bless.

Dera

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Was MJ right?

Hello, Recently, I feel like my family has been going through a lot of hard stuff. Some things are inconveniences and some other things are life changing, but I think the real challenge is the way each challenge seems to come simultaneously. That has be really hard. I know that we are definitely not alone in this and that there are so many of us out here who legitimately feel like we just can't catch a break; one thing after another attacks which leads to this overriding feeling of fear, anxiety and hopelessness. I was listening to a song today and was reminded that even though gratitude does not change our situation, it changes us. When we are not getting those things that we really want at the moment or we face really difficult situations, it's very easy to enter that place of feeling like you have nothing to be grateful for, or feeling like you need to be prepared for the worst in any situation, or that you cannot rest until you map out everything that could possibly go
Read more

Nigeria, America and the UK

Random, random, random.... I was watching a movie the other day and it's a baseball movie, so the coach goes up to the team and proceeds to give them a pep talk. "Y'all have worked so hard...", "get out there and do your best..." - you guys know the drill. And then the team proceeds to play and win or lose, they're still a team. It got me thinking about my experience growing up and playing soccer in Nigeria and then playing it again in the UK (if you keep in mind that in both of these other places, they call it football and that totally makes sense). In the UK, it was kind of similar to America. Before the game, coach would tell us which positions everyone would be playing with his little whiteboard and marker and then we'd get a little pep talk with some tips and would be out on the pitch for the game. This team was a bit different though. About a month into my playing with the club, I started noticing some tension between some of the girls on
Read more

Are you a perfectionist?

To all the perfectionists out there, I woke up on Monday less tired than normal. I go on walks with my mum every now and then and we have to wake up super early so that my mum's ready for work on time. We started walking and all of sudden I started feeling tired. My mum walks pretty fast (even though she'd disagree) and at first I thought it was just that. But the tiredness was deeper than that. I'm not being dramatic. I felt drained from the inside out. I felt tired of trying to catch up to my mum and tired of trying to be better behaviour-wise, cooking-wise and failing. And so my body responded in the only way it knew how; I cried. Before Monday, I would never have called myself a perfectionist. But after a conversation with my mum and some careful, but painful reflection, I realised I was beating myself down for my mistakes and my slip-ups which are completely natural. I also realised that it didn't start on Monday. What I'm trying to say is I've come t
Read more