On Tuesday morning, I woke up to a phone that was functioning completely independent of me. My smart phone had lost its senses. On Wednesday, as I was being transferred to a new phone, I thought that I had lost all my notes and correspondence for approximately two hours. With my old and new phone in my bag, as I traveled on the subway with tears in my eyes and in a totally melancholic mood, I was forced to question my relationship with my phone.

For example, as I was watching a commercial on the subway, I said to myself “the last time I saw this commercial, my phone was still alive, my correspondence was there.” I realized how much I had gotten used to having everything in the palm of my hands. I had gotten used to living as if everything that was stored in my phone would never vanish. I was looking at the other passengers with eyes full of sorrow as if I was deemed to be the unhappiest person of the day and as if nobody could ever understand what I was going through. Yet, at the same time, I was trying to accept the situation and reassure myself, telling myself that it’s not a life or death situation while also remembering all the extra work I would have to do to fix this situation, wondering if x person’s folders are also gone. At 11am, I was ready to down a bottle listening to the most melancholic songs I knew.

And then the IT guy took 4 minutes to transfer everything that I thought I had lost from my iCloud to my new phone. As I was returning home on the same subway line, I was surprised to find out that now I was the happiest person of the day. How could a device that I had refused to buy until 3.5 years ago had become the center of my life? I ask this with the awareness that I had said “I am not addicted to my phone” on several occasions prior to this. Because I think we are all addicted. Emotionally, functionally and in terms of time. We are addicted on different levels but we are all addicted.

Ege

Translated by Talya Arditi