Wonder World and The Real World--A Story of Loss

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Yesterday, I woke before the alarm and had some time to kill. Isn’t it sad I’d do that to time? Time is precious, and yesterday I chose to spend it on a ticket to Wonder World as I reached my hand to the nightstand and picked up my phone.

So quickly did I enter this fantasy sphere — with a mere flick of my finger. Soon I was viewing the mindboggling scope of the earth, of all of humanity. I could see in photographic or videographic detail ships at sea half a world away. I could see ice sheets, lava, and rare species. I could study so many faces — those sentenced to prison, missing children, riled politicians, funny animals, and fancy pop stars. If I wanted, I could zoom in to see what their eyes looked like the moment paparazzi captured their face forever.

With an effortless digital transfer from my bank of time, I gained an entryway into a voyeurism of untold dimensions. I could see things I dreamed of seeing, but far more things I’d never heard of, or that never occurred to me were important — and they aren’t.

To pay with my time, as precious as it is, was a no-brainer. The feeling of what it’s like to touch the vast trove of information on my phone isn’t even a feeling. It’s an immediacy. It’s a straight shot to every possible option. Once I’m pulled in, I’m happy and satiated — albeit momentarily — and it sets my curiosity on fire.

Then I wake from Wonder World and notice the time. After enjoying my phone’s magical allure, the steadfast tick-tick of the clock is always much further into the future than I would have guessed. It’s a shock. You’d think I’d get used to the speed of the clock, but I haven’t.

This is usually when I growl with reluctant acceptance that on yet another morning, I paid more than I’d planned to on my ticket to this boundless world. This is when I’ll put the phone back on the nightstand and lie in bed for a moment, silent and still.

This is when it happens.

The world outside my phone — the one I was born into, the one I can touch — comes into focus like a quiet giant that’s been standing next to me the whole time. It says nothing because it doesn’t speak like the phone does. It has no words. It has realness.

There is oxygen here and a cadence far slower than that of the speedster phone realm. When I put my phone away, I can feel the pacing of my existence jerk to a stop. The car that is me slams its brakes to the ground and I can feel the ground under my feet. There’s no ground in Wonder World. It’s only an aerial loop-de-loop of attention.

When I experience the abrupt transition to this physical reality, I’m struck by how sad it is I reject its truths. I choose again and again to stretch my arm out, tilt my cup filled with finite time, and let it spill onto the ground.

Yesterday, as I lay in my bed, I could feel the world is a fact — a weighty, stunning fact of existence. But this weightiness is unassuming — nothing like the mirage of bells and whistles on my phone. A simple creature like me is so easily lured by a binary translation of the sound of a bell.

The more I put down my phone, though, the more I’m apt to prefer an unassuming world.

In the real world, there are smiles you can trace with your finger. There is cold wind down the back of your neck, spritzes of rain on your face, and hot tea on your throat. There is the electrical energy of the person in front of you.

Today I set out walking along a debris-strewn path, crushing dry acorns with each step. Crunch, crunch. This was cause-and-effect sent straight up my bones. It was substance — the small bulges felt under my shoes, the loud crack of the crunch, and the shift in my balance. It anchored me to this world. I wasn’t the audience. I was the actor.

As I walked through the neighborhood, I came across Michael, one of my neighborhood buddies. Since I talk to everyone, I accumulate buddies. I looked over at his house as I passed by and there he was waving from his front step. I thought maybe I’d just keep going and a wave would suffice, but no. Michael wanted to chat. So, okay.

I walked towards him because even though he’s probably close to my age, he seems thirty years older. He had an accident several years ago, and now he walks hunched over in a meticulous step-by-step. He also has a thick accent that comes through a labored voice, so I struggle to understand him usually. But we find our way.

Even though Michael struggles, he wears a smile on his face twenty of the twenty-four hours in a day. This is why he’s my buddy.

“Stephanie! Where have you been?!” He was not pleased with my recent absence from the ‘hood.

“Oh, Michael, I had the flu. Not fun!”

We set about chatting — about my kids, his daughter’s swimming, and his wife, who’s also my buddy. We walked together along the shoulder of the road, progressing like inchworms. We laughed a bunch.

Something like this never happens on my phone. When I’m on my phone, I have no indication I’m alive. When I’m intent on Michael’s blurry voice, or crunch acorns, or watch the deepening night wrap its arms around trees— it’s obvious I live.

Later, back at home before I went upstairs to bed, I walked outside onto my back patio to say goodnight to the stars. Right away I saw Orion and then Betelgeuse, Orion’s reddish right shoulder. Betelgeuse is self-conscious when it sees me. All I do is gawk. I’d feel self-conscious, too, but what can I do? Once I’m outside on a clear night I crave the ecstasy of how alive I feel, how meaningful and meaningless at the same time — an odd symbiosis.

I will never get this ecstasy from my phone. I’ll never get the harsh cold on the pads of my feet from the patio. I’ll never get the mist in my eyes when I peek through the windows at my family — the core of my life sitting there watching TV or cackling with each other in the kitchen.

The real world is not in my phone, and my life isn’t lived there. It feels like my life is on pause when I’m on my phone, but it’s not. It’s waning.

I want to live.

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Be well, friends.