My heart is racing and I’m starting to get nervous. I’m trying to picture a day without it but its hard to imagine. Yes, the “this” I’m talking about is my cell phone.

I went to Breakaway (a worship service at Texas A&M) on Tuesday night as usual. Traffic was crazy because of all the kids heading to Reed Arena and my friend and I are listening to music in the car, anticipating the amazing worship that God has in store for us. We get to our seats in crowded section 117 and I realize that I forgot my phone in my car. I wasn’t too upset about leaving it behind because I wouldn’t be using it anyways. But, in all honesty it was still weird not have my ‘security blanket’ with me.

Surprisingly enough, our speaker Ben Stuart based his whole talk around how a lot of people nowadays are not able to function without our phones and because of the endless amount of information and connection at our fingertips, we are disconnected from ourselves, those around us, and God.

He then asked us to “imagine walking on campus without a cell phone.” I don’t think many could imagine it, because it would probably never happen to them. But I really did consider the question, what would happen if I didn’t bring my phone to school? Well on October 21^st, that’s what I did.

I left my phone on the countertop in the kitchen after breakfast and my roommate later said that she chased me down the hall to try and catch up with me because she thought I left my phone on accident. I’m two seconds out of the door from my building and it looks like it is about to rain so I reach for my phone to check the weather but I realize that my phone isn’t there. Almost five minutes later I think I’m late to class so I reach for my phone to check the time, and I realize again my phone isn’t there. Within five minutes of leaving my room my phone has acted as my news for the weather and my watch.

As soon as I get to a stop light I see that out of everyone in the crowded intersection, only one person does not have a phone in their hand. No one was even looking up or seeing if it was time to cross the street, they all just waited until people started moving. I didn’t realize how big of an issue it was until then.

I get to class and I immediately focus on the lecture at that day because there was really nothing else to do. Usually in class at this point I’d be scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook or checking to see if I had any emails. In my next class, we had a hands on project to work on during class. I got done earlier than everyone else and noticed that without my phone I had nothing to do and nothing to check up on.

Constantly being on social media and always texting to get in touch with everyone is exhausting and I wouldn’t have realized that if I didn’t leave my phone in the car that night of worship. I didn’t understand how much my phone consumed me on a daily basis and how much it took away from my everyday life. Now I’m not saying throw your phone across the room and hope it breaks, but take some time out of your day to not use your phone or leave it at home during class because you never know what you could be missing until you look up from the screen.