The Blessings of the Unplugged Life

In the last few weeks, my life has been brimming with various commitments and changes. To name a few, my husband and I moved, we then traveled to the Midwest for a wedding, and we traveled to the beach for a long weekend.

In the process of moving we experienced what I’m sure many others are accustomed to: we were deprived of a fully-functioning home wi-fi network for about a week. Likewise, during our travels to the Midwest, we only rarely had an internet connection. On top of all this, I recently traded my smartphone for a “dumb phone.” Hence, I have experienced a relatively “unplugged” life in recent days. “Unplugging,” for the purposes of this consideration, does not necessitate a total break with technology but merely a simplified relationship with screens.

I have been surprised to discover the difficulty of this relatively unplugged life. I expected that I would relish my days with less internet connection and technological capabilities, and I have, but I have also been struck by the change that simplifying my technology engagement brings, for I can no longer depend so heavily on internet technology. When I drive to the grocery store or to work, I cannot rely on the faulty GPS that my dumb phone boasts but must attend more carefully to my surroundings. I must read street names and exit signs with more care. When I would like to capture a picture – as at the recent wedding I attended – I must either rely on the cameras of others or simply content myself to glue the moment in my mind with greater attention to detail. When I wish to check my phone for missed notifications, I cannot receive any email or social media updates, only notifications for unread text messages. And during our wi-fi-less days, I could not check my email at home at all. Neither could I quickly look up a dinner recipe or google the best way to dethaw chicken – when in the kitchen, I had to trust myself to my cookbooks and my instincts. What’s more, lacking home wi-fi frustrated my temptations to randomly look up a book or to search Spotify for a song, and these temptations occurred more than I might have previously imagined.

Unplugging, in short, caused me to realize the extent of my dependence on technology and forced me to make do with other ways of acquiring information and entertaining myself. Even though my break from wi-fi was brief and somewhat unintentional, and my transition to a flip phone is hardly radical, both have nudged me to consider the blessings that may accompany a life that is less reliant on internet connection.

There are many blessings that I could discuss: studies have shown, for example, that minimizing screen time at night yields better sleep, and my own attempts have shown that minimizing screen time in general leaves more time for other commitments. But the primary blessings I will discuss here have to do with attention. Unplugging forces one to pay closer attention, as my experiments in navigating with a dumb phone attest. Paying attention may not perhaps be beneficial or virtuous in itself, but attention can reap certain rewards.

Attention can reap the reward of knowledge. When I give my full attention to navigating, I comprehend my surroundings with more rapidity and clarity. Similarly, when, in a conversation or listening to a lecture, I give my full attention to the speaker, I comprehend his words and his meaning more easily. However, when I give my attention to many things at once or primarily to a screen, I can only know my surroundings in a fragmented way, though I may thoroughly know the ins and outs of my screen or the app on it. Perhaps you have experienced a similar phenomenon in conversation with a friend: your conversation partner (or you yourself) attempts to converse while also checking something on his device. His attention is divided; unsurprisingly, as a result, he cannot fully comprehend or participate in conversation. Undivided attention easily gives way to clarity, while divided attention naturally gives way to fragmented knowledge.

In his book Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Jeffrey Bilbro discusses how much of modern media dislocates us from reality and can even deform our understandings of the world and of ourselves. Nonetheless, Bilbro holds that  “when we grapple with physical reality, we become responsible – able to respond – to the needs of those around us.” As such, at the close of his book, Bilbro recommends walking as a simple practice for attending better – or becoming more “able to respond” – to our surroundings: stepping out of our front doors is “the simplest way” to begin to root ourselves not in the alternative reality offered by our screens but in our actual places and lives. “Walking allows us to experience our places at a human pace and scale; it gets us outside of our two-ton capsules of metal and glass – and out from behind our six-ounce capsules of metal and glass,” Bilbro writes.

Since our recent move, I have ambled around our new neighborhood every day that I am able. Walking in itself helps me to better know my place, but walking without a smartphone especially lends itself to paying attention to and gaining understanding of my place. I often bring my dumb phone with me in case of an emergency, but my dumb phone does not tempt me to check texts or emails or to perform a quick google search while on a walk, whereas my smartphone does. My dumb phone does not allow me to listen to audiobooks or music while I walk, whereas my smartphone does. This habit of walking without the entertainments and aids of internet technology has bestowed upon me the beginnings not only of a knowledge of my place but also of an affection for it.

Attention thus may give way to knowledge and to affection. “Attention is the beginning of devotion,” poet Mary Oliver quips at the end of her essay “Upstream.” This is the very reason that Scripture encourages us to meditate on God and his word “day and night;” this is the very reason that prayer necessitates a quietness and reverence of heart. Devotion requires keen, sustained attention. Do we not attend most keenly to what we love? And does not sustained attention represent the first steps towards love?

I hope and pray that unplugging results in not just a more thorough knowledge of my place but a deeper affection for it and for those who inhabit it. I hope and pray that unplugging allows me to care for my husband, my church, my home, and the work God has given me with greater devotion. I have not lived this relatively-unplugged life long enough to testify with certainty to these results, but I expect that one of the greatest blessings of an unplugged life is a well-trained habit of devotion, a readiness for affection.

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