Living cell-phone free

This past winter I went on a trip without my family, my first in 11 years. Since I was visiting multiple people in multiple cities and taking flights and trains that might well be delayed, I asked my son to revive his old cell phone for me. I used the phone for one crucial text alerting a friend of a 4 a.m. arrival and sent several other messages. But when I got home, I put the phone down and with relief went back to my cell phone-free life.

Neither my husband nor I have ever owned a smartphone, though my husband once had a flip phone for a year for a job he had over 20 years ago. Our 17-year-old has a phone but only got data last summer for work. Our 14-year-old has no interest (though it’s not like he’s never online).

My reasons for not having a phone have changed over the years. At this point, it’s mostly that we’ve never made the decision to get a phone. It’s never felt that it would make our lives better.

When cell phones first became a thing, we were concerned about the mineral coltan, 80 percent of which is found in war-ravaged Congo. Cost was also an issue. Our lifestyle choices kept our income low and getting a phone, or two phones, would have been a stretch. When our income increased several years ago, I assumed we would get a phone. But our kids would have actually been disappointed in us and we just didn’t have a good enough reason to go through the bother.

Time and space to create

Yes, if we had phones we would certainly find ways to use them. Living rurally involves regular trips to town (10 km away) or the city (140 km away). Inevitably the person at home thinks of something they want picked up or the person in town wants clarification on an errand. But mostly when we’re away, we enjoy being away – out of reach. The break from each other and from messages is welcome.

Having a cell phone comes with a cost beyond monthly payments. The demands on our attention and the ever-present lure of distraction, envy and comparison are significant.

Phones would inevitably make us less present to our kids, each other and others. As a friend who recently got a phone said, “I have more communication with people but it’s not necessarily richer communication.”

Phones would also take time away from other things we want to do. They would make us less relaxed, more distracted. I have a busy life with many demands on my time. Yet I have time to do the creative work that sustains me. With a phone I’m sure I’d have less.

Regular practices

To be sure, we still feel addicted to email and screens. How can we not? As our pastor says, “There are thousands of people working to ensure we are and stay addicted.” And electronic communication is helpful, particularly in a rural setting. So I work to incorporate regular practices to remind myself and those around me that there are other ways to live and other ways we have lived.

For Lent I chose to stay off my laptop for the first and last hour of every day, a practice I’d like to continue. We traditionally celebrate Good Friday entirely off screens as well as radio and landline. In a quest for less overwhelm, I recently removed myself from most mailing lists I was on. At Christmas I took a lovely three-day break from email. While I have one social media account, I never post and we choose to promote our direct farm marketing business through other means.

Parties and carpools

It’s harder and harder to live without a phone. Those security verification codes that arrive by text are really annoying and may soon make it essential that I get a phone. At a work Christmas party the feature game was played on our phones. I couldn’t play, reminiscent of not being able to play TV tag in grade school (we were the only family in the school without a TV). Another work event started with showing photos on our phones of our summer vacations. I had no photos to show (nor, being a farmer, had I had a summer vacation).

Taking and sending photos takes a few more steps without a phone. And there are people who really want to send you a text (and some do anyway). A mother we were carpooling with once repeatedly lectured us and our son on the advantages of having a phone, as if we hadn’t considered them. Not having a phone also means we sometimes have to wait. But waiting is nice sometimes – empty space and time in a busy life.

Still, I tell fewer and fewer people that I don’t have a phone. I keep the “I lost my phone” or “my charger broke” lines in my back pocket, though I haven’t used them yet.

Thankfully a number of our closest friends are also cell phone-free. Sometimes this makes meeting up more challenging. But I showed up unannounced at one such friend’s home in the city before Christmas to drop off a gift and was surprised to find her home (she works out of province). Off we went for a delightful impromptu supper together.

One sacrifice has been not being able to keep in touch easily with our Mexican seasonal agricultural worker friends for whom cell phones are their primary means of communication, both when they are here in Canada and when they are home.

Every year I wonder if this is the year we’ll get a phone. And for every year I’m without, I feel grateful.