Even as I sat there, waiting for the moment to sink in, it refused to sink in fully. A certain weight in my pocket seemed far too heavy as I sat there, the trees and the sky and the water glimmering and waving in the wind, oh so sweetly, as if nothing was wrong.
And nothing was wrong, technically speaking. But there was this constant urge to fish my phone out and record, to take a picture, play an aesthetic song, and post it for the world to see, post it to receive that little heart and false dopamine. Why? Couldn’t I just let this moment drift in, drift out, settle like silk on my skin until I didn’t know where it began and where I ended?
Something my father said made me think and realise something. He remarked, as the coffee rolled down his palms, “Don’t you ever feel like the phone weighs you down when you work? Suppose I carry a kilo of coffee from here to there – without the phone, it seems lighter. With the phone, well, there’s this weird pull.”
I cannot deny it. I feel it too. I don’t really believe in my mother’s hysteria that the phone affects our bodies and vibes or whatever. But it affects us in ways I cannot fully express or articulate, hanging like a weighted chain in my pant pocket. It makes the birdsong a little muffled, it makes me hyper aware of everything going on, as if I am waiting for something – like a ding to tell me that I have a new academic assignment or an extracurricular deadline. The phone becomes a symbol of tech placed far too close to human life.
And during moments of tenderness, moments of infinite beauty – like when you are witnessing fish play in the sunny waters or petting an animal and feeling them arch into your hand – the weight calls, it becomes so apparent and all-pervading, almost forceful. It wants you to acknowledge it. It reminds you of the memories you are missing out on capturing, a snapshot of your life that you must be displaying online.
While life stretches and lazes before us, while we are swallowed in its magnanimity, we are cajoled to commodify it, to fit it in a 1080 X 1920 dimension shot, complete with a song nobody or everybody has heard of. We are cajoled to share every tiny bit, our every move and twist and turn in some self-imposed panopticon. And for what? The pennies and approvals of people whom you barely know?
Life stretches on regardless. Like a cat sunning itself on a spring day. Nature dances on regardless, like an unconcerned nymph. But the weight is there. The question then presented to us is whether we will cast it off or bear it, perhaps the only situation where the latter is more favourable than the former.