I'm ashamed to admit that, before leaving for my two-week trip to Europe over the summer, one of my biggest concerns was not having adequate cell service. This might not be surprising, considering I'm a product of the "technology generation," but it seems a bit codependent to me. I think what I feared most was not being able to keep in touch with my family enough, or possibly missing some very important event via social media updates. I know, insert severe eye-roll here.
While keeping in contact with my family was my first priority, I knew that I didn't want to be away from all of my other connections, either. I can admit, too, that none of my social media accounts are actually important, but I had grown so accustomed to them being there when I was bored, needed a break, or just any given time.
However, without my phone handy, the experiences I took away from the trip weren't tarnished by the unimportance of my bad phone habits.
Things happen, and it doesn’t matter if you find out right away or not.
Something about the immediate exposure to every major national or international event has made it hard to accept being out-of-the-loop. I think I had almost built up a sense of security in being up-to-date at all times. However, since I couldn't access this information handily during my trip, all I could do was wait. What I quickly realized is that the things I thought I needed to know were better left unseen most of the time. Most of the news updates I was constantly inundated with were mentally draining. It was entirely a nice relief to not be bothered by the less-than-favorable things going on back home.
Living in the moment is better than instagramming in the moment.
Sure, I like any other college-aged girl was ready to "candidly" pose my way through Europe, just so I could rack up some likes on "the gram." What I didn't anticipate was being too busy too actually worry about the obviously staged photos. To be honest, we did capture our fair share of moments, but only because no one goes on vacation without taking pictures. Also, I did post a whole two times while I was there —but just two. As we hopped from city to city, I just didn't care enough to take away time from experiencing my trip for some likes.
Emergencies don’t spring up as often as you think.
Probably the most irrational part of my worrying came from the "what ifs" of emergencies. First, the idea that a sudden emergency would pop up back home was illogical. Our family almost never has emergencies, so the likelihood of one coincidentally occurring while I was away was slim. Second, the idea that I would need to be the person handling the emergency was very, very minimal. I had planned this trip well in advance of actually leaving, so everyone close to me already knew I'd be mostly unreachable. I think part of this fear also tied into the needing to be in the loop at all times battle.
Google Maps is convenient, but reading a map is a necessary life skill.
I always get flack from my grandparents when I talk about using my GPS frequently because "back in [their] day they had to read maps to get anywhere." While I do love my Waze app, I quickly learned why they're still hung-up on physical maps. I have a decent sense of direction and can navigate most subway systems fairly easily, but my map reading skills could be better. When you're stranded in a foreign country without Wi-Fi and need to find your way, you better have map on you at minimum. The least you can do is show it to a stranger in hopes that they can point out the path to your destination.
Growing closer to people requires real, face-to-face conversations.
I think my trip to Europe was especially unique because there were only three of us total: two of my aunts and myself. While I consider myself to be close with my family, I was still amazed by how much closer we could grow. I'll freely admit, however, that our bonding would've been greatly thwarted had our phones been readily available. With the absence of our phones, we were able to hold full, lengthy conversations over every meal. Even on the long, six-hour train ride from Paris to Barcelona, we couldn't rely on our phones for entertainment, so we turned to each other.
Yes, everyone is obsessed with his/her phone.
I thought this deep-seated obsession with Smartphones was mostly an American problem, but I was quickly proven wrong. Just because I didn't have the cell connection, it didn't mean others were without, too. This isn't to say that no one made eye contact, or no one stopped to help us with directions, or that café-goers didn't hold real-life conversations. It's just that, no matter where you are, almost all of us have succumbed to the necessity of staring down our phones every five minutes. The mindless scrolling, closing, re-opening, and scrolling are so habitual that I think we don't even notice it anymore.
In hindsight, I'm incredibly grateful for not having much cell service at all over those 16 days. The concern of detachment easily faded away as the experiences of the trip took center stage. While I was able to check my phone at night, I found myself not caring to see what it had to offer me. Of course, I was eager to share my daily activities with my family back home, but that's about all I actually felt the need to do. I even told myself that I was going to adopt this new carefree/phone-free attitude when I made it back to the States.
While I haven't done nearly as good of a job as I'd like, it's never too late to put the phone back down. I felt a sense of weightlessness without my phone so closely tethered to me, and I'd very much like to shed some of that weight again.
