When your phone battery gets low you plug it in to recharge. You may leave it plugged in overnight even though it was probably back up to 100% within an hour. You unplug it and are ready to go for the day. You use it for everything- calls, texts, email, browsing, ordering food, learning a language. The things you can use your phone for are endless. You use it up. Plug it in. And repeat. Day after day after day.
This isn’t a good long term plan. You end up using a whole lot of unnecessary electricity after your battery is full. And when was the last time you actually turned your phone off? And left it off for any period of time? You push it to the limit each day. And eventually the phone starts to slow down. The battery doesn’t hold its charge as long. You drop it a few times and start getting nicks in the case or some scratches on the screen. Dust accumulates around the camera lens. You have old apps that you never use taking up memory. And pretty soon the next gen phone comes out and yours starts to feel pretty shabby. Even though it still works in spite of not taking very good care of it you can’t help wanting to replace it. We crave the new. Not the reliable.
We are so careless with things. We are in a throw away culture. So many things are replaceable. Impermanent. Impersonal. I remember my first flip phone. The old Startac. I was so sad when I had to get rid of it. I’d had it for years but it just stopped working. I took care of it. Never dropped it. I don’t feel the same about my phone now. I’ve just had too many to get attached. I know there’s always something better, faster, bigger coming out in a few months.
Maybe we’ve developed the habit of being so casual with things because it makes us focus less on ourselves. What we need not only to survive but to thrive. To have longevity both mentally and physically. That’s hard work. It requires maintenance. Sleep. Hygiene. Nutrition. Conversation. Affection. Movement. It’s far easier to plug something into the wall and forget about it overnight than it is to take stock of how we feel emotionally and physically. And far harder to do the maintenance to be healthy, to learn how to recharge, and to plan for the long term. There’s no jack in the wall that can do that work. It’s up to us.
This is the hard work we must do. To maintain our humanity. To maintain our sense of self within a vast world. And to be able to separate ourselves from things and have real connections with people and our own minds. So in a world where we are used to just plugging something in when the battery is low, how are you recharging?
