Killed my phone, got back my soul

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Yesterday my phone died. Actually it didn’t die, I killed it. Threw it against the pavement. To be honest it felt really good but the euforia lasted a few seconds and then it was gone. I left my wallet on the ground and threw my Tarot deck into the grass. “Free”, I said. “Free from all”.

I walked for a while down the road feeling like shit. “Why does freedom have to be so painful?”, I asked myself. “I’m scared, scared to be all alone with myself. So many attachments, I need to trust that everything will be fine”, I kept saying

An hour ago I was in my room. Stressed by the heat, my slow laggy computer and the fact that I was trying to write some pointless shit for a freelancing website I work on sometimes. The owner of the house called me for lunch but I wasn’t hungry. I said that I didn’t want to eat and kept trying to write the stupid article.

After a few minutes I reflected on the sourness of my tone when answering to her and decided to go and eat. But she had started to do clean up and told me that I would have to wait till she was finished ‘cause things didn’t happen when I wanted them to. Just like that, the first tension of living with someone else arose.

I no longer wanted to work on the crappy assignment, didn’t want to be in the house, didn’t want to go to anywhere I had previously been. “This is it, the moment I let go of everything”, I thought. I started walking down the road with only my cell phone, wallet and Tarot deck and a voice in my head said: “seems like you’re taking a lot with you”.

It was true. Having the phone with me meant I was carrying all my social attachments with me. Also it was my monetary attachments as I had some crypto accounts with passive incomes and 2FA codes to unlock them. I wanted to let go of everything but the phone was an extremely hard one and this started to create incredible tension inside me.

Before I knew it, the device was shattered all over the street. “No turning back”, I figured. For most it just means to buy a new phone, but I have 6 dollars worth of fiat at most so it really means I’ll be phoneless for some time.

After leaving the wallet and Tarot behind I felt like I had finally taken a new direction in life. This was it, the moment where I leave everything I have ever known behind and start living the moment in the most extreme sense of the idea.

Excitement for the new lasted 5 minutes at most. Immediately my mind begin to fill with all sorts of fears and the pain kicked in with full strength. I remembered the cold nights I had spent in the streets before, the unforgiving hunger and the lack of freedom to choose when you have nothing.

I thought of someone I have a relationship with, how I would probably never see her again if I took this path. Against my will, tears begin to roll down my cheeks and I felt I couldn’t walk anymore. I sat on the edge of a ditch and placed my head and hands on the other end. “Please help me find strength”, I pleaded to the Earth while while I cried inconsolably.

After I cried away my pain I felt renewed, as if some heavy burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I started to walk again but the heat was intense thirst started to take hold. I begin to focus on breathing and repeated in my mind that water or some fruit to quench my thirst would come along soon enough.

Everything went calm until I made it into a more populated area. The houses, the yards, people’s faces, the mini-markets… everything reminded me of some event in the past. I locked up against the place and it’s people. I refused to give any of it the chance to become a new attachment. At the same time I felt a strong urge to go back and look for my things and forget the whole adventure.

The mixture of feelings made me feel tired and I was thirsty again. But my obsession with not seeking new interactions kept me from approaching a house and asking for water. I spotted a little spot under some trees which looked nice for a rest and lied down.

Again the pain started being removed and a new sense of strength came to my body. Thinking about it now, I realize that everytime I feel down it is being as close to the ground as possible that infuses me with new energies.

I walked again, until I spotted a dirt road that led to an área with a lot of trees. There were corn plantations and thought of stealing a corn to eat but refrained from doing it because several trucks passed by.

A canal carried water nearby but it looked dirty. Probably filled with agrochemicals as well. I realized I wasn’t that thirsty then because otherwise I wouldn’t have cared about such rubbish. When you really need something you don’t judge so much.

I sat under a rather large tree of a species unknown to me. I kept thinking, “ok, I did it… I left everything behind. Now what? What am I supposed to do? Should I sit here like the Buddha until enlightenment finally arrives? Why don’t I just die? Isn’t that the same? Isn’t this body just a physical manifestation of this false ego I give a name, personality and quests in life?”.

After a while of intense self-questioning and existencial mayhem I finally ran out of things to say to myself. I thought of the colorful images that usually portray Gautama Buddha, with his clean and bright orange robes. I looked at my plaid shirt and dusty pants. Darn, no golden aura around me, no halo over my head. The nihilist in me had a good laugh over this.

Suddenly I was just flat out bored. I got up and went to pick up my wallet and Tarot deck. I searched for some interesting piece of the phone (chip, battery or memory) but only found the exterior pieces. When I got back to the house I drank a shit-ton of water. Damn, that felt good.

I don’t regret destroying the phone. These days have been like a social media detox. I hadn’t realized how much time I was spending on Instagram and Appics just obsessively scrolling, thinking this swipe would be the last.

This is the second time I destroy a cell phone just when my relationship with it was becoming extremely unhealthy and robbing me persistently of awareness of the present moment. I feel like that is some version of myself from the future coming to rescue me saying “WAKE THE FUCK UP, DON’T BECOME A ZOMBIE!”. Or maybe I just have a short fuse and should work on my anger.

Whatever the reason I decided to act like this, it was a good choice as I have been able to get in touch with myself a lot more and heal up a lot of turmoil I had inside. They were things I didn’t even want to look at, so it’s good I’m doing it now. You can argue it would have been better to just turn the phone off for a few days, but that was something I kept telling myself I would do for a long time and it just didn’t happen. Sometimes destruction is the solution.

As for letting go of everything, I think it will have to wait. I suppose that happens when the time is right and is not something you can force. Also, from this state of better clarity, I realize that it is not something that should be done because you reject everything else, but rather because you crave to find out the mysteries behind it. All in good time friends.

I also apologized to Evelina (owner of the house) and she was very comprehensive. “Been there, with that chaos in my head so I understand”, she said. One can only be grateful for running into such superb human beings.