Look Up and See the World Offline
How to truly experience life away from your phone.
by ALEXANDRIA FABRIZI ★ APRIL 20, 2023
Road trips… possibly one of the most difficult and boring things to get through without your phone. How will you pass the time without music or Netflix? Honestly, I didn’t know until I looked up and found myself surrounded by some of the most beautiful sights within the natural world that captivated me enough to forget an entire virtual world even existed.
While traveling in Europe this past week, I was lucky to be surrounded by the most insane and amazing views: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the Swiss Alps. In planning to make the drive from Paris to Zurich, a very long seven hours, I started downloading episodes of my show to watch. I had been walking around Paris for the last four days, how many more old churches and scenic landscapes could there be? A lot, and I was most definitely grateful to see them.
As we entered Switzerland, I was truly amazed. I kept my gaze out the window the entire time. The snowy Swiss Alps in the distance and the beautiful lakes were unlike anything I had ever seen before and most certainly did not want to miss.
Whether we are ignorant to the beauty our daily surroundings hold or are simply too obsessed with our phone, many of us are actively choosing to miss what is around us and skip out on truly living and appreciating life. We live in a society consumed by technology, allowing ourselves to grow dependent on it. It’s informative and entertaining. It’s convenient as we send messages and receive instant replies. We feel gratification through likes on social media. There are pros to its existence, but there are also many cons. It’s addictive and persuasive. It’s a poor substitute for pure human interaction and a breeding ground for misinformation and negative comments. We lose ourselves in our phones and we lose our sense of reality.
As college students, the dreaded boredom that exists in roadtrips can easily be translated to that one lecture you just cannot seem to get through. Temptation is high when we want to online shop rather than pay attention in class and talk to that one person over Snapchat rather than in person. Within the college setting, technology is evidently everywhere. Although, this does not mean that you have to use it. In class, you can easily take notes in a notebook rather than on a laptop, eliminating the potential distractions that technology poses. This forces you to look up at the professor and the students sitting around you, rather than staring into your screen. On the weekend, instead of texting your friend, just go see them. Face-to-face communication still exists, in its rarity, and is much more powerful and authentic than any text. We are reminded of the abilities of nonverbal communication, such as body language and facial expressions, as we interact with those around us. Emojis can only take us so far.
As a society, we must learn to stray away from communicating primarily through text and social media and become present in the moment. Presence is a powerful thing. We can easily be physically present within a situation or conversation, but are we aware and engaged? If we are on our phones, then most likely not. Put the phone down. Things will begin to appear more clearly. You will be able to listen actively to those confiding in you, appreciate the nature around you as you walk through campus, and actually see the faces of those who pass by.
We will never experience these four years of friendship, knowledge, possible love, wild fun, and whirlwind of emotions again. Don’t allow your phone to take these experiences away from you. Your surroundings hold everything you need to and should see at this time. Once you see the beauty within things around you, you begin to feel gratitude and peace – something that no image on a screen can generate. We are young and vulnerable to new sights and experiences, so take advantage of this. Appreciate our beautiful campus and the snow on the ground. Appreciate the unfamiliar faces you encounter each day and the words on the page of the textbook in front of you. Appreciate your friends as they talk about their feelings. In order to truly know the art of appreciation, you must be uninterrupted, present, and – most importantly – you must look up.