I bet you don't want to have this talk: the one where I tell you how good it'd be to take a tech break, to escape the internet.

And you'll ask me why I say escape, why I think technology is bad and should be fled.

Yeah, I said you should run from it, escape. Don't run from it like you're scared, but run away for freedom and joy of it.

But it is called escaping when you are a slave. . .

I didn't realize that I was a slave to my phone until I put it down for a month.

Actually, I was forced to relinquish it at camp, to put my phone in a plastic box in a closet that is, but that's beside the point.

I learned a few things when I lost my right-hand companion, and I learned how much I'd been missing out.

Phones give you this serious disease that is clinically termed "FOMO," or "fear of missing out." When you get free of the phone, you usually get free of the FOMO, and it is the GOAT (not explaining this one). We have a God who tells us to be not afraid, and He is sovereign. We can choose to be at peace right where He has us with the people He has given us, and it is an easier choice without a daily stream of comparisons. When you flee from the phone, beautiful things like contentment and peace can come to dwell. It is a turn from the surreal to the real. When you flee the phone, you stop fleeing life and thought in all its reality.

It is work to put your phone down, to walk outside, to pick up a book or to have a hard conversation. But as we've all experienced, tasted, and seen, the rule in the life is that anything worth having takes work. And communication on a phone pales to the vibrancy of in-depth, face-to-face conversation with another person. Our brains weren't made to relate to people in the form of pixels on a screen! But we are addicted, and it pulls us in, the ol' easy click and scroll, the FOMO.

So, whenever I was robbed of my tech, I was so blessed. The gadget that I thought I needed did not even cross my mind. The addiction that pulled, the ease that beckoned me to spend each spare moment entertaining myself, they vanished.

Because of this newfound freedom, all of the camp staff were able to create deep friendships and to be blessed by serving one another. Minutes we would have spent with a screen were spent sharing testimonies, playing games, and helping others out in their various jobs around camp. We noticed each sunset and took the time to stare at them from our rocking chairs (it was the dream). Technology creates a lot of noise in your head, a sort of constant hum so that your brain is always running, always busy. Without it, we were given time to think and process. I grew more thoughtful and at peace. With that extra time, I found myself scheming about how I could serve those around me.

On top of all this, I think that tech is dangerous in that it makes us self-focused, it makes it so easy to compare, at least that was my experience. A phone is your own, and it is a reflection of you, a mini-you, and you primarily use social media to promote yourself, to create an online version of you. We may scroll through pictures of other people, but we too often are thinking of and comparing ourselves to those other people.