I walked into the store and the manager (the one I wrote about in my first post on this topic) said, “Renee, I told you! I knew you’d be back. You want your iPhone turned back on, right?”
“Yep,” I replied! “But, I lasted 2 weeks!”
“That’s longer than I thought,” she said. “I was sure you’d be in the next day!”
She read my first post, chuckling throughout. Then, my iPhone 7 was quickly and easily switched back on. My cute little flip phone sat on the table in the store looking woeful and lost. Extremely compact, light, and willing to do what it could do, but not up to the demands of ‘off the grid’ places in the universe. I brought it home and put it back in its box – telling it how grateful I was that it let me conduct this experiment, thankful for its usefulness and it progressiveness in a day and age when hand held mobile devices were just being developed. I whispered what I had believed, “If it’s good enough for Captain Kirk, it’s good enough for me.” I wanted it to know that is has a legendary history, and that it had a key role in setting the stage for the technology that people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates would create.
I learned much about myself during this experiment – not the least of which is that I need to question myself about those things in life that claim me – that keep me bound or unaware of other important things in my life. By taking the plunge and switching back to a flip phone, I saw habits and patterns in my life that I would never have even noticed had I gone on without questioning and experimenting.
So, did I fail? Perhaps. I failed in going backwards to a technology that won’t work for the demands of my current life. But, I succeeded in that I questioned and I tried. And, isn’t that all we can ask of ourselves?