“I’m kind of excited to see how many new followers I’m going to get.”
No, those words aren’t the catty opening lines to the latest season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. This wasn’t the profound existential pondering of a thirteen year old girl at the mall leaving Smackers marks on an Auntie Annie’s pretzel.
Those words came out of me.
I was standing in the kitchen at work last night cramming cold fries into my mouth while (somehow, also?!) laughing with one of my co-workers about what made a truly extraordinary Instagram photo. Then, the conversation casually turned to talking about the sorts of photos I was hoping to capture while abroad.
And that’s when I said it. The thing about getting more followers. It came up out of me like word vomit, with no warning whatsoever and absolutely zero curbing charismatic charm.
I immediately wanted to die.
Now, obviously I wasn’t granted my temporal wish to evaporate from this earth, but what I can tell you is that in that moment, I was deeply humiliated. Humiliated, and in awe of the thing inside of me that so easily dredged up such a selfish, arrogant response. I’ve never felt that I was motivated, in any of my social media activities, to draw attention from as many people as possible.
So…what, then? I drove home that night and thought a whole lot about my heart’s intentions, and why on earth I said what I did.
Then, this morning, I stumbled across this post by our Adventures CEO, Seth Barnes: Should We Ban Smart Phones on the World Race?
A fellow Adventures member made an incredible comment following the blog that the Holy Spirit used to convict me deeply. He wondered “whether or not [he] could pick up his cross with one hand, and still carry his phone in the other“.
And it was after reading this that I made the decision: when I leave for the World Race in September, I will be leaving my phone behind.
Because, quite simply, God told me to. And because I’m starting to get the sense that God wants me to become used to being real, real uncomfortable.
Because social media is not reality.
Because real life is passing us by at the rate of 60 seconds per minute, and we are missing out on the awkward, hilarious, passionate moments when we sit and stare into the blue light of our iPhones, scrolling through the airbrushed versions of other people’s lives.
Because I would rather remember the way people, temples, mountains, airports, food, actually looked in that moment – and not by the filter I put on it.
Because I can’t give myself wholly to one place, culture, or people group, if I have one foot back home.
In the end, fellow racer Christina Shore challenged me with three questions that she asked herself when it came down to deciding whether or not to bring her phone:
1. When else in my life will I have a WHOLE YEAR to live without a phone?
2. Will I grow more with my phone, or without my phone?
3. Will having my phone with me help me to be more present, or less present?
One of the best nights of my life happened a few years back, in a cabin at the outskirts of Scranton, Pennslyvania. (And let me just state for the record that there is nothing to do in Scranton, Pennsylvania, regardless of whether or not you are a fan of The Office. I’m sorry.) Me and several friends were alone at this particular house with lousy cell phone signal, no internet, and no working cable, so we laid on the family room couch and made up a game involving the use of titles that comprised the resident family’s extensive DVD collection.
We played for three hours. Yeah, it got a little weird. There were awkward silences. But nobody looked at their phones. We looked at each other, instead. And four years later, I still think about it.
So that’s it, then. I’m going to go ahead and use the money I had set apart to get a better iPhone and purchase a small camera, instead, and record individual moments. And by the time I leave in September, my Instagram will be deleted, my phone plan cancelled, and my heart and soul thrown into this World Race thing with two hands completely free to touch, serve, carry, climb, and be hold the wounds of this broken world.
Anything, except clutch my smart phone.
