Always this cell phone

Do you know the feeling – you have a family, children, a lot to do and you constantly complain about a lack of time – and you find yourself on your smartphone for many moments of the day.

In the past, you may have looked down on people you met in the park with their children—their attention was elsewhere, just staring at the screen while life, happening in the moment, including everything their children were doing in their play, passed them by.

Wicked parents, you might have thought, or simply shaken your head. From the outside, such a picture was simply incomprehensible to you.

Then your time came—and faster than you could blink, you found yourself in similar situations. What happened?

Why can't you just be fully present with your children, with your family, without letting your attention be distracted by your phone?

I'd like to share with you something from my own experience on this topic that I've discovered within myself. Here's a somewhat older diary entry I wrote before everything changed—or rather, was continually being renovated.

Dear Diary – Frustration

"I'm so annoyed with myself. The children are just too much for me—no, not the children, just the constant talking about topics that don't correspond to my adult world. The second-by-second call for my services. The recklessness regarding my energy levels. I want to talk! I mean, really talk! I want to connect, talk about topics that concern me, about love, sex, my job, my feelings, my plans, the fear of always being trapped in the hamster wheel. I want to hug someone who is exactly the same size as me. I want to drink wine and forget that my actual world looks different from the one I've constructed in my soul.

Because I don't actually have the fancy, free life I constantly dream of. I rush to work like so many others, I spend well over an hour a day in my car, spending half of it driving from one daily happening to the next. I structure my daily routine by sitting in the car at traffic lights. I tend to make meals quickly rather than healthily, and I feel bad afterward. I nag my children fifty times more than planned each day. My behavior increasingly reminds me of my mother. "I'm tired," she always said, and "quickly" and "later."

And in all of this, I don't even have an exciting love affair to distract me.

I see my friends much less often than I tell myself. After all, we all work, after all, they don't have kids yet, and after all, they don't want to sit at the playground with me as often as I have to.

I can't stand it. I can't stand this daily routine, the constant repetition of the same loops: getting in, getting out, eating, sleeping, working, organizing.

Dear Diary – Lust

That felt good – just writing out all my anger. Especially the anger at myself – because no one is forcing me to live the way I do, right? I want to enjoy life! Enjoy it! To get up in the morning because something exciting is waiting for me. Not just a nice vacation – I mean something fundamentally different. A daily routine from which I don't need a vacation.

That's what the red number on Facebook promises me. A new message - something is happening, something unexpected, something that could change everything. At least, that's how my brain interprets this red number - clever, right? Of course I know it's just a neural trick. Nothing groundbreaking rarely happens on Facebook or WhatsApp - but at least similar messengers are released in my body and I enjoy the feeling of excitement and hope. What I really need, however, my phone can't give me. It only gives me a fake feeling of togetherness and connection. I want to be more and more aware of this. I know I have to get out of there. I want to get out of there. I want my life to be so exciting and me so present that my phone no longer plays a role.

Trying to drown my frustration in my phone. That can't work. Apple has no place for that.

Yes, I want to change my behavior. But first, I'll give myself some understanding. I accept that I'm a person who simply doesn't want to be alone. A person who longs for connection and depth, for variety and adventure within the security of family.

I'm human—and a smartphone works so well as an attention grabber because it's geared toward our deepest, most basic needs. I fell for it. My basic needs are still there. And for that, I'm just going to give myself a hug."

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