It comes in varying sizes of "small". It does not live and breathe, but requires energy to work. It needs no clothing, but can't seem to exist without expensive accessories. It's the sidekick of almost everyone you know and even sits at the table at dinner parties and with families on Movie Night interrupting both, often for no good reason. It can sit quietly, even if not in "time out", and just when you begin to offer praise for the good behavior it lets out another sound to startle you. It seems to endlessly call attention to itself.
It's the undisciplined, boundary-free toddler. It's the obnoxious, self-absorbed teenager. It's the adult without direction.
It's the cell phone. I think you knew that.
Cell phones make wonderful communication tools. A cell phone allowed me to contact my traveling husband three states away, letting him know I entered the hospital for abnormal heart rhythms. He turned around immediately toward home. Ten years earlier, he would have learned the situation in a message at a hotel desk after arriving at his destination. Cell phone contact saved worry, anxiety, and time apart at a crucial time.
Cell phones can quell loneliness, to a degree, and allow someone to see and hear another through the available functions of the phone. Yet, have we invented a new kind of crutch, rather than building character and the ability to depend on God in the darkness? Have we avoided stretching ourselves in new ways because we prefer easy communication?
While cell phones serve to connect us with the outside world, they can divide us in our very own homes. Whether set to vibrate, ring or song, a cell phone can stop a live conversation in a single pulse of its alert systems. Those who have systems on high alert (social media, auctions, news, multiple e-mail accounts, comment notices, etc.) encourage these interruptions more often, annoying and distancing more people at a faster rate than other users.
Annoying and distancing? Look around you. See the Stepford Wife stare of the people with cell phones in hand. Shudder. Quake. Shock. Grimace. Help us, dear God ... really ... we need it.
In recent years, the number of texts and instant messages have overtaken voice calling. Cell plans focus on the texting aspect. Our young people show why. Just look at a group of teens in the mall, armed with their hand-held devices and texting away, mostly oblivious to their environment and to the people with them. Those in their company receive less notice than those on their phones.
I surmise that one phone call eliminates the need for approximately 10 texts (or more), because the spoken word allows for more direct communication and understanding than does the written word. Inflection, tone and volume don't translate well or at all in text, no matter how many smiley faces someone attaches to a message. Misunderstanding happens more easily in writing in a spoken conversation.
Cell phones deliver texted one-word messages as well as multiple paragraphs right to purse or pocket without considering the possible interruption of life, family, work or leisure time. Why doesn't the giver CALL the receiver?
I have four reasons:
1. does not want to interrupt
2. wants to get information to receiver without having to take time with additional conversation in a live call
3. has lost his ability to control his impulses - has a thought, has to share it
4. sender feels bored, looking for entertainment, using receiver as source
Would a person make a live phone call to relay that same quantity of information? Would you phone call a, "Hey!" or a, "Whatcha doin'?" Would you call a family's landline phone to offer the few words you type in a text? Would anyone pick up any type of phone to share that quality of information?
Most if the time, no. I have heard it happen on rare occasion, but only as a lead-in to a bigger conversation.
As a people, we have allowed the quick and the inconsequential (texts/IMs) to invade the long-term and the important (family/people present with you NOW, in the very space you occupy). When our children have to wait while we finish typing a text message to a friend across town or an instant message to someone across the world before we will listen to something on their minds, in their hearts or about their school day, we have made the wrong choice. We neglect our children when we make this choice. When a husband must hold the thoughts he wants to share while a wife types "just a bit more" to her sister on vacation on an exotic island, something has gone haywire. The wife needs to attend to her husband. The sister needs to send a postcard.
Choose to talk over texting. Choose people over a device. Choose solid, in-person relationships more often than phone-centered outreach. The phone should not serve as another "being" in the room, to receive the honor of attention with its every noise or movement. It should never come before family, or make a meal grow cold in its wake. It should not sit between spouses when one or both can't keep his/her attention on the other person to converse, but can respond to every cellular message received immediately and with focused attention.
Focus on the here and the now rather than the person on the phone. Make it a point to move from text to talk. Communication holds the key to intimacy in marriage, in family and in friendship. Keep it real. Keep it quality. Keep the cell phone out of it.
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