Two reasons that I try to guide and inquire of my children when it comes to their phones:
Between them, my children have displayed diverse levels of innate management and mismanagement, but I suspect — though not assume — though what’s it matter because it is all guessing, so I might as well say that I would have placed my phone between two slices of bread and eaten it, or perhaps found a shrink ray and minimized myself and used the phone for air hockey — I suspect I would have been in the 5th percentile among them when it comes to self-control.
And self-control is a threshold for play. I suspect — though I don’t assume because it is nothing more than fancy — that I would have lost my ability to play. I would currently be a member of two fellowships, trying to learn my way home.
Play is activity that You are in charge of, Friend. Nothing really stands in your way, save maybe your bladder, your stomach, and your heart. But take heart! When appetite or necessity impede you, you can return to play again. That phone, though, it never sleeps, never eats, like the devil**, and it may call you to rest in it eternally and never again allow you to play.
I am so grateful to have grown up without a phone. Not because the phone is bad. In itSelf..self, it is not any badder than a donut. Nohbdy and their mama made me eat eleven Boston cremes. And***
I come from an era when we “played pretend” — army and doctor and Voltron. We lowered the hoop and became David Robinson or Dennis Rodman. (It was a little ballsy to say you were Michael Jordan, and if someone did — well actually, you learned something about a dude**** no matter who they chose to be.) I am grateful for that time.
Today, we say, we play. Now more than ever. But not free. Not unencumbered. Not self-directed movement. So, how and when do we play? When we are —
Sitting. Laying. Staying. Eating the creative mulch of someone else’s (plans?). No.
The plans of others / who are meeting the requests of others / who are meeting the demands of others / who are us, eventually, partially, proximally and distally.
A gray apple becoming dirt becoming food becoming root becoming trunk becoming branch becoming bud becoming apple. So very all-of-us as to be none-of-us.
None of us making, and nearly all of us eating the creative mulch of us, with an un-find-able o.o12345th percentile owning the stove, the scale, the baking soda. I am so grateful I grew up playing, but I am not free.
I want to keep creating and I want companions. Companions who are sharers. I know that there are many — so many gifted sharers. And as many creative people as there people — it’s not a type. And those who share, please, can we encourage other creatives***** ‡Let’s humanize each other, now and forever more.
*Both have problems, and they may appear different, but until I see a measure for rock bottoms as they pertain to individuals, I am comfortable with the assertion above.
**Is this Puritanical-Ludite so effuse with judgement that he doesn’t see his own dependence on screens? A blog? If he goes back to buttons and condemns zippers, is he not playing games with himself. (Wait - no, not playing. He’s captive to his own fear of technology.) Screwing! Is he not screwing with himself?? Brother, not at all. I am not calling anything the devil. I said “like”. I was playing until I created this footnote.
***This phone I have only stands on the corner, as do my laptop and t.v. The web and the god-bots are the high level middle (hu)man..agents. There is an ephemeral corporate body that is really the kingpin. An apparition using cells that cannot be caught with hands. That is too much for me or us to arrest, so we must attend to our own hearts first. But take heart!
****Genderless “dude”. So I guess that it was gonad-y to say you were Michael Jordan.
*****People. Creatives are people, as opposed to, well, non-people‡, un-people, and anti-people.