Someone Call Security
The sense I’m getting is that our addiction to our phones is one of the great sources of modern insecurity. When we get into the habit of messaging someone—or even choosing to take a photo—whenever we feel we’re experiencing a moment of significance, we lose something. We lose our own internal processing, our private consideration, our pure enjoyment.
Do you recognize the moments I’m speaking of?
I was sitting at the International Arrivals gate at the Seattle airport recently, totally struck by the beauty, vulnerability, and range of emotion among people reuniting there. I was having my own private, lovely experience. And yet, I felt a compulsion to share it over text.
Sure, that can be seen as a nice way to connect with someone far away. But I’m noticing how our nonstop correspondence—through texts and photos—has grown beyond a “nice connection.” It’s as if I didn’t know how to simply sit in my own stillness, in my own body, and have my own experience.
Imagine if I didn’t have access to a smartphone—or a phone at all. Would I get up and find a payphone to share that moment? Perhaps. But instead, I stayed. I let myself enjoy the moment and gently eased out of my compulsion to share, back into my own body and heart.
When we allow our inner dialogue to complete its own cycle, we have to be in our bodies to do so. We need to be focused, centered, and in tune with ourselves—not swept away by the constant distractions of our digital world. And when we’re integrated in our bodies, when we experience a full cycle of emotion and reflection within ourselves, we begin to cultivate a kind of self-security—a groundedness that grows from within.
This matters.
It’s important to feel settled and whole inside yourself. We want our emotional body to live in the heart space, in peace—not seeping outward through texts and photos, only to be trampled by the world, or really, by others’ insecurities.
You control you.
Do your best.
We seem to have been programmed to share—as if our private experiences are somehow incomplete unless witnessed. We crave validation, to be seen, to be acknowledged. As if our own acknowledgment of our experience were not already enough.
I want to focus on this: self-reflection, self-acknowledgment, self-security.
Because yes, we are relational, conversational creatures. We’re built to connect. I think the real issue is the pace of it all—the constant demand, the endless loop of attention.
There’s no need to rush to a solution. Simply noticing might be enough. Drawing awareness to the conversation is key—and knowing when to end it may be the beginning of something truer.
