My wife, Judy, and
I recently spent a few days camping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We enjoyed three pristine sunny fall days in
some of the most picturesque and remote places in the US. The UP has awesome beauty but does not have
many of the modern conveniences that we have grown so accustomed to. The campground, tucked into the Southern
shore of Lake Superior, had no electricity and as such no artificial lighting
to mask the millions of stars and a moon giving enough light to read a book. We were not used to this remoteness but we
both began to cherish it.
Suffice it to say
mobile phone reception was spotty and internet access impossible. Even the GPS in the car could plot our longitude
and latitude but became challenged matching our specific location to any of the
back woods roads.
The short respite
from the incessant beckoning of our digital devices got me to think about how
tied many of us have become to these tools and toys. The slightest beep or ring of our mobile
phone causes an almost involuntary response to check and see who is trying to
contact us even though we know full well it may be just a text from our neighbor with a picture of her cat staring at
a goldfish.
Try as I might to
limit my attraction to the siren calls of my mobile phone and iPad, I find that
I often check my email or text traffic just out of habit.
So I have a
challenge for all my readers and it is one that I will take as well. How about we all carve out a portion of
everyday that are digital communication free zones. That means we don’t carry our phone on our person. Perhaps we turn it off. This may be around the dinner hour or when
we are putting the kids to bed. During
this time we won’t answer the telephone, look at Facebook or immediately respond
to a text. Perhaps we begin with an
hour. Who knows maybe we can go a full
day. Of course, you may need to drive to
the UP for motivation.
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