1 hr/day | 1 day/wk | 1 wk/year
This should be the baseline.
Counter the myth a smartphone tells that you are a very big part of a very small world; remind yourself you are a very small part of a very big world. Don’t let the lie set that your homepage is your home, your profile is your identity, and your app library is where your knowledge is.
The monastic cell was a place of prayer and focus. It was where the religious spent most of their life.
Every time monks left their cell they came to the world less a person because of the good from which they walked away.
The modern day cell, that place we spend most of our life, also leaves us less a person but not because of its intrinsic good for the person.
Every time you put down your smartphone, you are choosing to turn from that which dehumanizes, decontextualizes, and deracinates.
To return to our humanity, our context, and our rootedness is a process of struggling home in a bigger world than we remember.
Begin to return then by taking three small prescriptions, three rules for your life, three pathways home:
Spend one hour a day with your phone turned fully off.
Spend one day a week with your phone turned fully off.
Spend one week a year with your phone turned fully off.
