“I hate my cell phone.”
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that phrase. “I hate my cell phone.” “I hate this place.” “I hate it when that happens.” Really?
You can probably blame the comedian Louis CK for this blog entry because he had an interview with Conan O’Brien a few years back that felt like a slap in the face. Technology has advanced so much in our lifetimes (especially in yours, all you young ‘uns) and what do we do with it? We use it, we only sometimes enjoy it and we almost always take it for granted.
When I was in Norway with my parents, we bought a new cell phone with some prepaid minutes. We needed it to call people, find out where we were supposed to go to meet them, contact hotels, etc. It came in really handy. When we got home, I wanted to keep it for my own, but the chip inside was related to AT&T’s network. The people at Sprint wouldn’t replace the chip, so I couldn’t use it. Since I couldn’t use it, we gave it to my niece. She was 10. 10 years old with a cell phone! I would never have dreamed of having a phone at that age and some adults almost expect it these days.
Now there are iPhones and Blackberries and various other “smart phones” that you can use to download music, find restaurants, make fart noises and who knows what else. Do people using their phones to watch videos on YouTube think, “Oh my God, this is amazing!” Nope!
I see people trying to send text messages or surf the Internet and sometimes it doesn’t work right… “I hate my phone!” No, you don’t. You may be upset that it doesn’t work, but hate it? Then stop using it. Put it in a desk drawer or hide it from yourself for a month. Or a week. Or even a day. How does it feel? Are you nervous and jittery without it or do you feel better because you hate your phone? I never say it, but I almost always think it: “If you hate your phone so much, get rid of it and see how much you hate it afterward.”
Which is not to say that I’m immune. There are times when I’m doing simple stuff like taking vitamins in the morning. I’ll shake the bottle a little to get one in my hand and it’ll fall on the floor. “God, I hate that.” Really? Do I hate it? No. It’s annoying and inconvenient, but I don’t hate it. I try to make a point to correct myself whenever I think something like that. “That’s so annoying.” And I feel better.
And if you hate something as insignificant as your phone, what does that say about everything else by comparison? What do you think about the Holocaust? If someone killed your parents? Vin Diesel’s acting? “I hate my phone, but I super duper really really really hate that other stuff.”
We’ve been given a lot of gifts in this world and we tend not to notice them. They’ve become a expected part of life. When parts of our lives don’t work, that sucks. Fair enough. Does that mean we should hate them? No. There is very little out in the world that deserves hatred and we should remember to appreciate how much awesomeness is inside these tiny handheld devices that we can hold up to our ears and talk to our friends around the world. Around the world. Isn’t that amazing?
As for Vin Diesel’s acting… like I said, haters gonna hate, but sometimes it’s well-deserved.
