The book I have read the most, in the most ways, is Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I read it as a young mom to remind me how to let my kids just BE in the summers— not scheduled, not entertained, not managed. I read it to my mom in the hospital over and over. Probably a dozen times straight through and a few vignettes on repeat as she began to fade. There is an entire section of my book-in-progress about Dandelion Wine. It is no wonder that the thing I am struggling with lately finds a key in this small novel about the summer of 1928.

I have a problem with my phone. I use it for work. But I also use it for not-work. I treat it like it is relaxing but it isn’t. It is actually numbing. Blah. Nothing. Like the Nothing in the Neverending story— which is basically a giant warning about books and imagination vs nothingness as the enemy. A warning far ahead of it’s time.

And even more ahead of its time, the chapter in Dandelion Wine about the Happiness Machine in 1928. A man invents a machine you sit in that shows you the entire world. The wonders. The smells. The sunsets last forever. He gifts it to his town and family with the best of intentions and love. And then his son won’t sleep at night and they find him in the machine. And then his wife weeps for all the things she never knew she was missing. Eventually, it catches on fire and they decide to wait until it is burned to the ground before calling the fire station. It didn’t give them back the happiness they already had.

The thing about happiness machines, phones, and other tools of Nothingness is that in their intention to bring information to us, they instead take us away. They take our time, our intention, our attention, our contentment, and our connection.

I want it back. All of those things with the people I love.

We have recently lost a few friends in our community — some slow, some fast. All of us left wishing for more time. The only way to get more time is to take it back.

There is a simple equation that is anything but simple in it’s implications. Open your phone. Find the average time per day on your phone for the last month.

average time (month) per day

x 365 days

divided by 24

This equals the number of 24-hour days on your phone in a year. Poof. Gone.

I did this and felt completely gross. It actually doesn’t matter if it was for work, or movies, or music, or social media. It is all consuming content, not creating. It is all taking me away from the people I love, my home, my body, my days.

And then to really drive it home, layer in that total number of days on the phone and think about things like vacation time. Tuition cost per year. A 40-hour work week. Your hourly income. How you also sleep in that 24-hour time frame so you are actually giving away even more days. How many hobbies I don’t have because they require time. How many (actually few) days you really get with the people you love. Your kids growing up. Your parents aging. Your friendships. Your own lifetime.

Take it back.

I don’t have easy answers to how. I fail at this daily. I have timers, and blocks, and I leave my phone behind. I have looked at getting a flip phone but can’t figure out how to travel. Open to all suggestions. The best tool I find is to keep checking that average time per day, doing the quick math, being grossed out, and resetting again.

I let it burn down around me like a Happiness Machine gone wrong. I look up to find the happiness I already had.

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