I’d seen the link a few times on my Facebook feed, but I had always been browsing from my phone so I wasn’t in a place where I could listen to it. “I’ll get to it when I’m on my computer,” I thought. Finally, yesterday, I got around to watching the short two-minute clip and found myself staring off into space for an extra five minutes after.
If you haven’t seen the viral video “I Forgot My Phone” yet, please take a couple of minutes to watch it.
I think the scene that really struck me the most was the proposal. I’ve always preferred the more intimate approaches to proposals because I see it as the moment that you begin the journey of bonding your souls together and I think that deserves some privacy. The thought of someone simultaneously filming the process, as if the recording of it takes precedence over the moment, is horrifying to me.
What’s scary is, I can see myself in so many of those scenes—flashing pictures at concerts, checking my phone before fully getting out of bed, scrolling through twitter while “watching” TV—and I’m disappointed in myself. When did I become a robot? When did I become more concerned with documenting a moment than living it?
I know I’m not the worst offender (I often stare at the top of my boyfriend’s head at dinner before snatching his phone and hiding it in my purse), but I don’t want to be that person at all. I don’t want to miss the real experience of a concert because I was too busy trying to figure out how to get the zoom on my camera just right (especially since those tickets cost like $400 now!). I don’t want to be so concerned with social media that I don’t socialize with the real life people in front of me. I can’t help but to feel like this is what they were talking about in The Matrix. I need to unplug.
One day, last year, I forgot my phone at home. At first, I was pissed. After the day had passed though, I was amazed at how wonderful the experience was. Just to actually be in the moment for once. Walk through the streets of New York City without music blasting through your ears and you remember why you love it. Have lunch with a friend without interruptions or taking 35 pictures to find the right one to post on Instagram. I’m deciding today that I’d like to make that a weekly ritual.
I realize that with my phone glued to my hand, I’ve been having a secondhand experience of my own life. We’re living our lives for the photos rather than remembering life through them. Life is much more fulfilling when you are immersed in a moment. From now on, I am going to make a valiant effort to dive headlong into the waters of my life and stop recording from the beach chair.
