Put down your phone. Life is happening.

Put down your phone. Your boyfriend or your girlfriend whom is otherwise not the suspicious or jealous type, misses you. He or she is worried that maybe you no longer find him or her entertaining. That maybe you look forward to your notifications, text messages, and updates more than you do spending time with the one you love. Soon, he or she will pull away thinking that you don't care as much as you used to. Put your phone down. Your phone won't love you back.

Put down your phone. You are eating dinner with your grandparents. You hardly get to see them and even if you are eating in somewhat awkward silence, cherish it. Let them ask you the same questions over and over, and answer them over and over. Tell them about school as if you love it (even though you hate it). Tell them about the cute person you sit next to in class and about the date you plan on asking for. Ask them questions. Anything in fact, I promise they will appreciate it. Put down your phone. Your grandpa will pass away soon, and your grandma will shortly after. That pain doesn't get any easier, it only gets harder.

Put down your phone. You are in class. Classes that you paid a lot of money for because college is expensive. But you don't think about this because financial aid loans relieve you of that financial burden temporarily and you push off that stress for as long as you can. So you pick up your phone and refresh every social media hoping for a couple "new stories" to entertain you while you sit in God awful economics. You do this again and again until you no longer hear the professor speaking. You only look up once, when you hear your classmates bagging up their books. Put down your phone. You fail the next exam because you can't remember what your professor said in class. But you can remember who "checked in" at Planet Fitness and who liked your new selfie.

Put down your phone. You are driving down the quiet country back roads and jammin' out to iTunes. Your phone vibrates in your hands, a text from your mom asking when you will be home. Your mom taught you better, however, you don't text and drive. So instead, you close out of the text and go to change the annoying song playi.... You wake up in the hospital after an induced coma. Everyone is so thankful that you are alive. So are you. Until you find out that while you were busy changing the song on your phone, your four year old neighbor boy ran out into the road to catch his ball that rolled away from him. Put down your phone. He is dead, and you will wish you were.

Put down your phone. Your dog has been whining at the door to go to the bathroom for thirty minutes. You yell "wait a minute." So your dog waits another twenty. You finally go to the door (with phone in hand) and step in a puddle of piss. Your dog is laying in it's kennel. So ashamed and so sorry. You get angry, because you are sick of having to clean up piss. Put down your phone. A year later your dog is diagnosed with a cancer. You do whatever you can to make the last days the best days.

Put down your phone. Your five- and two-year-old have been watching cartoons all morning and afternoon while you sit on your phone having "mommy time." Little do you know, that your five and two year old have been watching you, learning from you, even when you don't mean for them to. Your children grow up thinking that the best and easiest way to communicate is through their cell phones. They rarely come home to see you, because an "I love you" in text will suffice.

...Just put it down. For the sake of others and for the sake of yourself. Look up and live.