TTYL (LOL)

“O No!” my guide’s urgent call draws my attention just in time to dodge a rock hurtling from above.  I press against the ice as it rebounds off the wall, finally landing somewhere 30 feet below. “I have to lower you,” he shouts from above. “That’s your phone.”

A few seconds pass where I calculate how my phone ended up on a freefall trajectory down an ice route. Being from Los Angeles, the shamelessly self-promoting content-creation Mecca, I had handed him my new iPhone 15 earlier in the day to capture some envy-inducing photos. I would find out later that it escaped from his jacket pocket while he peered over the edge to check my climbing progress.

Once I’m on the ground and unable to locate it, my guide rappels down with a near-iPhone-like velocity to search for it. Removing his gloves, he jumps into the shin-high freezing creek in which it fell, reaching into the rushing waters trying in vain to locate it, praying it hasn’t been carried away by the current. His hands turn pink from the cold. I imagine his toes aren’t doing much better.

If a sign of progress in the philosophical arts is how quickly we can move through the five stages of grief to ultimate acceptance, in this moment, I am the stoic Picasso. “Don’t worry about it man. It’s just a phone.” I’ve been basking in the infinitely majestic and majestically infinite landscape of the San Juan mountains too long at this point to care deeply about a four-inch piece of crammed semiconductors. 

IRL (FR)

The next few days without a phone prove more intriguing than anticipated. Lying on the couch in my rental unit, an odd feeling envelops me. It starts subtly, then intensifies – a rarity in today’s world: boredom. Once an epidemic, now it’s about as common in the developed world as malaria. Deprived of the antidote, I catch myself multiple times reaching for the disappeared phone, the phantom limb of my consciousness.

Waiting for my burger at the local brewery, I sit alone. The other parties of one are lost in a digital abyss, eating food they don’t taste, entombed in invisible cubicles. Under normal circumstances, I’d be among them. Together apart.

A strange thing begins to happen. I notice details. The ice axe heads on the wall signed by legendary climbers, the blown off lid to a fermentation machine signed and dated. Interior design choices become a curiosity. Swings instead of barstools? Why this particular wood?

My attention enters the world of the bartenders, eavesdropping on their chatter. They are no longer simply their role in relation to me – they are people, people with loved ones and places they’d rather be, people who prefer McCarthy to Pynchon, people who would move to Istanbul tomorrow if they could. Individuals with complexity – not roles.

TBH (FWIW)

Approaching an ice wall, it appears as a single frozen mass. When our wellbeing depends on where we place our axes and crampons, it transforms ice into a multi-faced, evolving object. The illusion of self fades as we find unique divots and snow buildups indicating good footholds. Completely immersed in the present, we listening to water trickle behind the thin layer of freeze. 

In boredom, our awareness expands. The two-dimensional world opens up like that ice wall. We don’t look, we see. We don’t hear, we listen. We examine the nuances with curious intent. Even the content our own thoughts become subject to observation, and in this act, we gain perspective on our selves. We find ourselves engaging in the world around us on a deeper level, sparking up conversations with strangers, genuinely wanting to reach out of the discomfort of solitude for connection instead of simply applying a digital anesthetic to it.

IMHO (HTH)

But alas, the siren song of technology is too melodious to resist. We find ourselves drowned in a state of absence from our own lives. Never here. Lost, planning for the next moment or just distracting our way out of this one. Our attention hijacked. Our innate human desire for improvement misdirected towards escapism and entertainment.

Is the present moment really so underwhelming? Does boredom really need a cure? Perhaps it is just a gateway to a more present state of being, an uncomfortable invitation to live more attentively. Perhaps it is the cure for a dopamine-addicted monkey mind unable to calmly experience the subtlety of what is.

The longer we sit with boredom, the less bored we become. It’s not merely an inconvenience but a profound opportunity to break free from the constant allure of distraction and truly engage with the inherent richness of the present moment disguising itself as the mundane.