bella gerens

I am famous amongst a small circle of adherents for neglecting to top up, refusing to answer, failing to charge, and forgetting to carry my mobile phone. It is one of those old-time jobbies with a green and black dot-matrix type screen, and does not possess any picture-taking, mp3-playing capabilities or other fancy gadgetry. I also do not have voice mail, nor do I answer text messages. That small circle of adherents knows that the best way to contact me is by sending an email, which, although I check ye olde inbox regularly, I will not necessarily respond to in a timely manner.

This is because I like being alone; I enjoy the pleasure of my own company; and I do not like being reachable at any moment of the day or night at someone else’s convenience. Selfish? Perhaps.

But I achieved my formative years in an era not long distant but certainly before the advent of such technologies as email, SMS, instant messaging, and the iPhone. I learned to amuse myself outwith the presence of other human beings and developed a keen enthusiasm for self-analysis and introspection.

Think about it: when was the last time you were on a train, plane, bus, or date and didn’t either (a) fiddle with your communication device of choice, or (b) witness someone else doing same?

And most of the people reading this blog will be adults, who know what life was like before wireless technology connected us all. Imagine being a teenager! They have no memory of such an existence. I witness this every day, usually when one of my students’ mobile phones blurps during a lesson. ‘Who could possibly be unaware that you’re in class right now?’ I enquire. ‘Oh, it’s just a text,’ they answer; ‘it’s for me to read later.’

This recent elimination of alone-time from the western lifestyle is the subject of an excellent essay in the Boston Globe, flagged up by the much-underrated West Virginia Rebel. The author argues, without any tiresome Luddite hatred of progress, that our capacity never to be alone does not necessarily eliminate loneliness.

I do not think it can be a good thing that there are entire generations of people being brought up without the ability to appreciate solitude or the joys of their own mind; much of the growth that brings about emotional maturity is achieved during those hours we spend alone with our own thoughts. By failing to acquire this skill, are the younger generations denying themselves the pleasure of contemplating the deeper mysteries of human existence?

[I say all this, of course, as a confirmed evader of unplanned communication, but there is one piece of modern technology I despise being without, and that is my iPod. A couple of weekends ago on a train journey to London, I realised I had forgotten to charge it, and the usually-pleasant hour-long journey became a hellish nightmare of undesired eavesdropping into other people's conversations. The mobile I could drop down a privy without a backward glance, but give up the iPod? Never.]