Everyone has experienced the moment when your heart races as you search your entire house and your car for your cell phone. You can’t find it anywhere until, suddenly, you realize that it’s in your hand. Who put it there? Has it been there all along? Yes, it probably has been there all along and you had no idea.
Contrary to what we’ve been told, this probably doesn’t happen because we are a culture obsessed with our phones (although we are). This phenomenon doesn’t just happen with our cellular devices, it happens with items as important as our glasses and keys. These are all items that we find to be irreplaceable to some degree. We panic because if we lose one of these items, we fear how long it might take for a replacement to be made available to us. In our society of instant gratification, waiting one day to replace lost keys is an eternity. If I lose my glasses, I may have to make another appointment and wait for my new glasses to be crafted. We’re afraid to lose our phones because we are attached to the personal touches inside the phone, but until this happens we don’t believe that our phones are attached to us.
In the same way that one may feel more comfortable while wearing sneakers, we become comfortable with our phone, keys, and glasses being in our designated pocket or purse. Switching from sneakers to stiletto heels may feel as strange as keeping your phone in the opposite pocket. In the way that sneakers become a part of a person’s routine, so do all of the important possessions that we carry every day. Although not wearing the sneakers at all is also comfortable, we want to wear them when the option is sneakers or heels. We become accustomed to the routine and anything outside of our routine causes anxiety.
Anything can become an extension of us. For many people, glasses and contacts are their eyes. No, they’re not part of the person’s anatomical body, but they help the person carry out daily functions that would be more difficult without assistance. This is a positive effect of an object becoming an extension of a person’s body. When a character on a sitcom loses the glasses on his or her head, the audience laughs because it’s funny. When one forgets that his or her phone is already in his or her pocket, suddenly it’s a problem for everyone.
We’ve all been told that our phones are extensions of us and that may be so, but we don’t have to treat it like a problem when it isn’t one. Although it can be nice to leave the phone behind sometimes, remember that forgetting is different.
