Personal Essay #4: A Bittersweet Letter to My Love

 To what piece of technology would you write a “love letter”?

Technology has advanced quickly, and the faster it evolves, the more we fall in love with it. It started as a relatively healthy relationship, one where both sides had to commit and sacrifice parts of themselves for the other, us sacrificing our time, energy and money and the machine, its battery life and struggle to boot up. But the deeper into the relationship we got, the more we sacrificed and the more dependent we become on our machines. This reliance has gotten so bad that I would even dare to call it codependence. The longer we live with technology, especially portable technology, the more we give to it, and the more it takes from us. One such thing being taken from us would be our independence, and I can’t help but notice this in the relationship I have with my phone.

It started off small, my reliance on my phone, back when I didn’t have as much to worry about and as much responsibility. But knowing it was there was already affecting me. Growing up with the world at my fingertips, knowing that I could just look up whatever I wanted to, and not having to struggle to find entertainment or direction affected my thought process.

I feel like my dependence is most affected in relation to how I drive, or more specifically, how I get directions. I have lived in Champaign-Urbana my whole life, but knowing the general direction of locations and being able to come up with a route to drive there is a completely different story. So, I have found myself defaulting to looking up or just plugging in directions to wherever I want to go. This dependence is fine in theory but can have massive drawbacks in certain scenarios. One such instance would be knowing street names. Because of my dependence on google maps I have found myself very lacking when it comes to knowing streets in relation to each other. After all, I could just follow the arrow and the highlighted streets instead of being on the lookout for signage and directional indicators. And this directional dependence has its own drawbacks. I am more likely to trust my phone over myself, and that is just not the best way to go about life.

So, following the notion that my relationship with my phone is one of love, if I were to write a letter to it, it would mention some of the following: I would mention my thankfulness to be able to communicate and connect myself with people or things I would’ve never known existed otherwise. I would show my appreciation of it being able to entertain and inspire me to try new things or become more educated on the things I am interested in. I would thank it for being a constant in my life, whenever I’m in an embarrassing situation or trying to divert my attention to something else, it is always there to be my scapegoat and explanation.

However, just because I have so much to positively say about it, doesn’t mean that I am completely blinded to its cons as well. So, I would criticize it for its ease, because I have an easy way out, I don’t have to struggle as much as I would like to, so I’m unprepared if I don’t have my phone with me. It also prevents me from getting bored, which might sound nice now but will have negative consequences later. If I’m unable to feel bored, then I won't be able to figure out how to entertain myself without my phone. So, while I truly love my phone and all it does for me, it almost does too much for me to the point I get negative drawbacks. 

And so, because of all of this, I think it would be better if we took things a little slower, I need some more time for myself. But I hope we can stay friends.