Source:https://medium.com/
By:Irina Achim
Photo by Flo Karr on Unsplash
You’ll look at your father and notice the way in which he’s struggling to find some conversation subject with you because he’s so happy to see you home and you know that you’d better join him in this struggle since his grey hair that stubbornly continues to show comes as a threat to the unlimited number of conversation you thought you’d always have.
You’ll look at your mother and see how much she strives in preparing the food and setting the table just right for the girl that has come home. And you go and help her since you don’t really remember when was the last time the two of you did something together.
You’ll look at all the people walking near you in that lively city square that seems to join all the important streets in your town and almost feel the hurry that’s chasing everyone in there. And you notice how chased are we all, and how this run is nothing but something untouchable, unreal, unimportant since all the time here is so limited and this hurry does nothing but numb us to the reality of living as mortals.
You’ll feel the uncomfortable feeling of staying in the middle of the room at that gathering you didn’t want to join but felt obliged to, and the embarrassment of not knowing what to do with your hands. And you take a look at all the people in those tiny groups surrounding you that seem to be better than you at small-talk and you decide to go all in, talk to those strangers, instead of acting busy on your phone because you know that doing it one, two, three times in a row will decrease the fear in the end thus allowing you to live.
You’ll taste your food instead of capturing it and posting it with the thought of reaching a certain number of likes on that social media platform that lately seemed to be running your life, thus making you both use it and resent it at the same time.
You’ll really get the taste of diving into deep conversation with that friend of yours late at night in the old city center of your home town, feeling like although time has passed, it really hasn’t for the two of you and you thus get that sense of yourself that you’ve almost missed these entire years, back.
You’ll really see that place you’re visiting, immerse yourself in the sight and smell and feel and touch, and you’ll really feel like your holiday has managed to disconnect you from all that you’re currently experiencing back at home, letting you know that life has so much more to offer than Monday to Friday routine and that all the important stuff that seemed to matter back home, doesn’t really matter anymore.
You’ll take a look at the people next to you and you’ll cannot help but realize how much you’re missing when you’re stuck inside your phone: the way a father looks and takes care of his little girl, making sure to answer all her questions; the 10 yeared boy that reads a book at the corner of the street while cautiously trying to walk at the same time; the contentment on a girl’s face after she took the first sip of a freshly bought coffee. You get to see all the stuff that is there which seems basic at first but is anything but basic when you give a second look and see how much emotion and humanity is in there.
You’ll smoke that cigarette on a late Thursday evening with nothing to accompany you but yourself and your thoughts and you’ll get to decide whether they’re bearable or not and what you need to do if it’s the latter.
And last but not least, you’ll take a look at you and you’ll see you. How you feel when you no longer escape inside your phone and what you can do with the itch that will constantly be there.
You’ll get to meet your boredom, your embarrassment, your restlessness or your lack of whatever pushes you into unlocking your phone for the 38th time in a day.
You’ll get to meet your breaks in between all that you’re doing and your voids in your routine.
And then you’ll need to fill them with something else other than distractions from a virtual world that won’t ever make up for the real one, which is slipping between your fingers unnoticed and unseen each and every time you pay more attention to your phone than to it.
Nerdome 