I Love You More Than My Cell Phone

 

I love you more than my cell phone.

This is true on the days I tuck my phone away and look deep into your eyes as you talk to me. And also true on the days when, between hmmm-ing and yesss-ing, I hear-ya-ing, that I sneak a sideways glance to see whose text message just popped onto my screen.

But perhaps if more people follow this restaurant owner’s lead, in the future, there will be less of these little diversions away from the present-people I love.

Relevant Magazine is reporting that…

One restaurant owner believes that mealtime should be free from distractions like texting and compulsively checking a smart phone. Jawdat Ibrahim is so passionate about restoring an atmosphere that fosters genuine conversations that he’s offering customers a 50% discount on their meal if they turn off their phones when they enter his establishment.

It makes me sad to think that incentivizing unplugging might be part of what helps us, like the generations before us, absorb new technology into our life rhythms without being overtaken.

I appreciate the technology and the options for connectedness it brings. But I also appreciate reminders like this that remind us to let technology supplement our lives, rather than consume them.

I suspect our generation, the one who first adopted smart phones, will have to experiment with usage for some time, but I suspect–like anything–we will find a way to manage it. That smart phones will one day be lack-luster, old-news, and as ordinary as refrigerators or radios.

People nay-sayed about how TV and land-line telephones and radios and electricity would be the fall of civilization too, you know. And somehow citizens of previous eras muddled through.

I think we will too.

Read more about this restaurant here.

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