"The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained in sudden flight but, they while their companions slept, they were toiling upwards in the night" (Longfellow, Good Poems for Hard Times). The core values of determination, hard work, and stick-to-it-iveness are responsible for the creation of most (if not all) of the modern comforts we enjoy and for the abundance of valuable knowledge. Unfortunately, some of our most useful creations have the potential to train us to exclusively pursue instant gratification and leave stick-to-it-iveness and determination behind in the dust.
This week, I had the unique opportunity to experience life without a cellphone after mine unexpectedly retired itself. I won't lie, life without a cellphone is logistically difficult for a college student, but being without a phone has taught me an important lesson: my cellphone may have been using me as much as I was using it.
The timescale of instant gratification has changed over the years with advances in technology. Johannes Gutenberg eluded to the remarkable power that lay inherently within the printing press when he said, "Give me twenty-six soldiers of lead and I will conquer the world." Books, which had taken meticulous monks years to copy, could now be produced in a matter of days by the press. Books and reading were made available to the laypeople, and news could be spread across a city in a mere 24 hours, just like wildfire. Each subsequent advancement has also served to make instant gratification... well, more instant.
We are approaching (or already at) the limit of the human brain's capacity to respond to stimuli as quickly as we can use technology to make it appear. Neurologically speaking, our central nervous systems are wired to deal with lions and tigers and bears; our limbic system (which we have in common with reptiles) takes action to make our bodies fight or flee from danger without consulting the frontal lobe. The body is programmed to respond to threats with the lizard brain for survival purposes. Today, instant gratification has become a most clever disguise for the unwelcome guest that accompanies most of us 24/7: lizard-brain stress.
I noticed that I felt happier this week than I have in a long time. Why? This week was very inconvenient with no phone, two sets of lost keys, and a computer that decided to shut off for a few hours right before I needed to contact my husband for a ride home. How could I possibly feel more content when my life seems to have increased in difficulty?
I found my answers in the beautiful leaves on the ground, one multicolored and the other bigger than my hand. I saw contentment in the sunshine streaming through the window when I realized I had no phone, and no task could be accomplished in the two minutes that I sat waiting at the doors of the library. I experienced wonder as I realized that I had heard people speaking in six different languages on campus in two days during my quite, phone-free moments.
If you're like me, the trap of instant gratification may have snuck up on you so subtly that you didn't know it was there until it was gone. It's the pressure to use your phone in every spare minute to work through your daily checklist with "efficiency." It's the fear that strangers will unfriend you on Facebook if you don't like their photos or respond to their birthday wishes fast enough. It's the agony of thinking your significant other may be giving you the silent treatment when they don't respond to a text for three hours due to no reception. In the way we use our cell phones today, I see the cleverly disguised face of lizard-brain stress hiding behind the attractive mask of instant gratification.
Are we coming close to crossing the line from our technology working for us to us working for our technology?
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Image Credits:
Creator:kickstand
Credit:Getty Images
Copyright:kickstand
This post honestly makes me want to leave my phone at home for a week.
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