Between you and me, it would be a lie if I said I haven’t depended on my phone as much as I have. But it would be a greater lie if I didn’t admit my simultaneous dissatisfaction with how these tiny contraptions have made me feel entirely less… well, human. 

Growing up in the early 2000s, technology was second nature to many of us. We had iPods in our pockets, wired headphones tangled under sweatshirts, and talked with school friends through MySpace. Now, decades after the first smartphone arrived, it’s evolved into more than just a tool: it’s an appendage. An extension of ourselves so visceral, not even Steve Jobs could have predicted it. 

But I must admit, as I’ve entered adulthood and the demands and responsibilities of life have only intensified, the never-endings dings and buzzes have made me start to wonder if it’s all too much.  

The conundrum is this: we can’t seem to live without our phones, yet we can’t fully live with them—too distracted to look up and take part in the life unfolding around us. And I can say personally, as someone who’s missed far too many special moments with the people I love for the ding of a notification, I long for the days that came before.  

We’ve replaced morning conversations with our baristas for a mobile order pick-up, we’ve completely forgone the beauty of hand-written letters in exchange for emails, and we text so much that even a phone call has become too uncomfortably intimate.  

And as our world transgresses further into yet another technological AI-led revolution, it’s not easy to forgo our phones when it’s become something so essential, apart of everyday mundane life that we don’t spend much time thinking about till we don’t have it on us. 

 I long for the time when our internal compass guided us more than Apple Maps, and when getting lost meant there was more to experience elsewhere. 

 Where our laughter wasn’t interrupted by dings and buzzes.  

And when our hands were free to hold someone else’s because there wasn’t a device in it. 

 I long for a time where we lived long, full lives, and felt content at the end of it all because we actually— 

Lived. 

But now the story feels different. 

Moments so beautiful they could be painted, now blurred by the blue light of a phone. Brushstrokes smudged by endless swipes and taps, spoiled by family and friends who can’t seem to put their devices down long enough to simply be— 

Present. 

My Buddhist father always told me that anxiety, is something we feel when we are concerned with matters of the future, and depression is something we feel when we’ve dwelled too much on what’s already behind us. Phones have made capturing both timelines an obsessive pursuit, pulling us away from the most important one: the one happening right in front of us. 

In chasing these timelines, we’ve learned not just to remember or to plan, but to perform. Even in stillness, even when no one is watching, there’s a small part of us holding the pose, just in case.  

Now I’m not suggesting we should throw our phones away, for most of us, they’re unfortunate necessities to our world now. But it does mean we can choose how to live with them. Put it down during dinner with friends and family! And no— not just on the table beside you, but tuck it away. Actually away. Let a message wait until you’ve finished a conversation in person. Protecting our time isn’t just about our relationships with others, but with ourselves.  

If we can do that, we can shift our days from something merely observed to something truly lived. And maybe, when the end of our own story draws near, we’ll remember not the notifications we answered, but the weight of a friend’s head on our shoulder, the warmth of the summer air filling up our lungs, and the conversations with our grandparents shared over coffee and sweet marranitos,  

moments we didn’t just witness, but lived inside, because we were fully there.