Life-Giving: A Guest Post by Carlos Whittaker

When the notification slid across my phone that random Sunday in 2022, it told me I was averaging over seven hours a day on my phone. Little did I know that it would lead me to move in with 20 Benedictine monks in the High Desert of California. Little did I know that it would lead me to move in with the largest Amish community in America and learn to be a sheep farmer. Little did I know it would literally change my life. Because the truth of it is that if I live to be 85 years old and continue to use my phone for more than seven hours a day, I would spend nearly seven of my remaining years of life staring at a screen.

There have been many books written about the dangers of screens and about the addiction of screens. But I had never seen a book about someone’s experience living life away from screens. I didn’t want to be told what not to do, I wanted to be shown what not to do. And since I hadn’t found someone to show me, I decided to show myself.

The experiment was terrifying and freeing. It was suffocating and breath-giving. It was all the things you would assume it was. But the biggest thing it was? Life-giving.

I’m typing this on a screen, and you’re probably reading this on a screen. What I found on the other side of these screens was a life that we have forgotten how to live. We have forgotten how to wonder for longer than 5 seconds. When we have a question, we can find the answer to said question through our screens. We don’t let ourselves wonder anymore. We have forgotten how to get lost and find our way. With Siri barking every single turn we are supposed to take, we have legitimately forgotten how to navigate not only the streets, but our lives. We have forgotten how to be in solitude. We are the first generation to have solitude completely eradicated from our lives. We have forgotten how to savor. Every moment of every day feels like a multitasking moment with notifications waiting for us every time we pause. Savoring is an ancient art form.

Here’s the good news. We can relearn how to live like we were designed to live once again. We can reconnect with our humanity. And the even better news is we don’t have to get rid of our phones to do it. I have cut my screen time in half since returning from my seven weeks away, and it’s not because I set up boundaries with my phone. No. It’s because I fell back in love with the beauty of life on the other side of my phone. And I hope that I can help you fall back in love with life on the other side of your screen too.