Choose the Input

I'm one of the few people I know that does not have a cell phone. My three girls have 'em. My husband has had a cell in the past ... on two separate occasions. He used to forget to turn it on, so it wasn't all that handy to try to get in touch with him that way.

But me? Never had one. Barely want one. After all, I'm home more often than I'm away and close enough to a land line.

More than that, I don't have one because I see what happens to cell users all too often. Instead of the phone being a convenience for them, the user becomes a slave to the phone. It buzzes or rings at any time, and the user can't help but answer NOW.

The user becomes slave to the technology rather than the technology being a useful tool for the user. For me, that's just unacceptable. It's tantamount to clogging up my system.

In the essay the above quotation came from, Pam talked about not watching news on TV because she sees awful images repeated over and over and over. That much negative input clogs up her mental system. It's not worth her time, effort or sanity to have to un-do the destruction those negative images inflict.

I think it's smart to consider what input we allow in our lives. For Pam, she stays away from repetitive negative images. For me, it's not allowing a cell phone to dictate when my train of thought can be interrupted.

I believe that what flows out of me has a lot to do with the input I get in a day. So I try to be just a little bit aware and conscious of the places where I have a say in what goes into my brain, and how often that input is repeated. I try to balance the negative forces with an infusion of deliberately positive messages.