A couple of weeks ago, I forgot my phone at home. I left the house at seven in the morning, and the traffic was horrendous, a rare occurence on my side of town. After observing all the people in the matatu with me, trying to figure out what they were thinking, guessing what they did for a living, how they spent their weekend (it was on a Monday) and what motivated them to choose their outfits, I got bored and thought I could send good morning texts to my friends -the few that I have and those who reply to texts. It was then that I realised that I left my phone at home. My first instinct was to panic, then I realised that as much as I always have my phone with me, it's not something that I can't do without for the 12 hours or possibly more that I would be outside the house. I had my Kindle so I read the whole way to town and the one and half hours felt like my usual thirty minute commute.
Last week, an acquaintance of mine asked yet another acquaintance for her phone so she could send a text. I asked her where her phone was and she said she had forgotten it at home. I then asked her if the text she wanted to send was very important, she said no. She just wanted to tell people that she had left her phone at home so they wouldn't bother calling or texting her until she got home later. I should add it was two in the afternoon and she had left her place at one.
I thought to myself that maybe it's because I have a few people with whom I communicate on a daily basis that I didn't see the need to borrow someone's phone. I sometimes leave my phone in my bedroom when I am at home. Sometimes it takes me more than 12 hours to check my emails and my WhatsApp messages. My phone is usually either on vibrate or silent, so it is possible that I would be having my phone with me but I wouldn't hear it ringing.
Sometime last week, I read a blog post (I am a lazy blogger, also I read so many blogs that I can't quite remember where exactly I read it; but believe me I would have provided a link) where the blogger was talking about loneliness and our need to kill loneliness by constantly wanting to talk to people and the convenience of a cell phone gives us the illusion that we are not lonely. I thought that there was some truth in that. I remember a friend telling me how a friend of hers was complaining how it was 10 in the morning and no one had sent her a message.
I don't know when I stopped wishing and staying by my phone waiting for people to call me. But it could have been the time when I stopped being interested in empty conversations. This is the time I started craving personal and meaningful conversations. Don't get me wrong, I love frivolous conversations, I love funny stories, I like reminiscing about fond memories or embarrassing stories, I love looking at funny photos and gifs, but I can't stand pretentious conversations. This is also the time I had had enough of bad grammar and people replacing s with x and I had a hard time trying to decipher what the message was. I became proactive and I started initiating conversations with the people I wanted to talk to: people whom I genuinely cared for; people who when I asked how their day was answered with something more than fine or good; people who when we haven't talked for sometime would not text me 'hi stranger' but would send me a funny photo, a link to a story that they think I maybe interested in and we would reconnect by discussing our thoughts regarding what it is they have sent; people whom when I send a link to something, they create time to read and give me feedback; people who would send me songs or movies they are watching and from these, I would get to know more about them; people whose opinion I love, even if it differs significantly from my own. These are the people who are not just telling me facts about themselves, but people that I am able to see their thought process and I see them as people with feelings and not just people I know things about.
Blogs then became something that I liked reading. Unlike other social media platforms like Facebook where you are asked what you are thinking and when you answer, you are asked to add a location, blogs are places where I see what someone thinks, their opinion, and when I comment, it doesn't matter that this is someone I don't know, I might not recognise them when I meet them on the street, but the sharing of ideas is something that is profound, something close to surreal. That is something that I am looking for in my everyday interaction, which also means that I don't have to constantly have my cell with me every waking second of the day. I don't have to seek my cell to kill the void that is loneliness. I am very comfortable without my phone ringing every single minute of the day. Because to kill loneliness, I don't wait for people to tell me a few facts about themselves, facts that don't inspire a need to know more about them or become better friends. To kill loneliness, I seek genuine and meaningful interactions that leave me knowing more about the person I am interacting with and myself while am at it.
The title of this post is from the song Killing Loneliness by HIM.
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