Reality and dreams

I saw an article online, which I now can't find, no matter how I search. It doesn't matter. The article was about a phone that's supposed to help you avoid smartphone-induced distraction and stress. More specifically, it's a phone that offers only a few apps, so you can remain in touch with family and friends, and avoid the constant intrusion of social media and the Internet. Of course, it's an adjunct to your real phone, and it works only when connected to the mother ship. So for just $400 or so, in addition to the $600 or so that you already paid for your smartphone, you can have a phone that keeps you away from your phone.

My favorite-ever phone was a Samsung slider phone with a perfect little QWERTY keyboard. It was small and neat, and a pretty red color. Like most messaging phones of that time (around 2009, so smartphones were around, but messaging phones were still widely used) it had an alarm clock and calculator and messaging and calling, and a low-resolution camera. You could even play games with it; not that I ever did, but I could have if I'd wanted to. No navigation, though; and no email, and no Google. So I don't know if I could go back. But it's nice to think about. It's nice to think about being out with friends and having a spirited and good-natured argument about which actor was in that one movie, or what year it was that some team ended a long drought to win a championship, without someone settling the question with a pocket full of Google.

*****
I worked from home on Friday. I had promised to review an SOP for a coworker, and while I was on a conference call, she texted me to ask me if I'd gotten a chance to look at it. I noticed the text, but I didn't respond right away because I was taking notes during the call. Or at least I thought that I hadn't responded. Because on Saturday, I was going to text her about something altogether different, when I noticed, to my horror, that I had actually responded to her request on Friday. "Nope." That was it. Not "Sorry, I forgot about it but I'll do it now." Not "Sorry, I won't have time today but I'll have it back to you first thing on Monday." Just "Nope."

I'm using third-party keyboard and messaging apps, which normally work pretty well. But the messaging app suggests responses that don't even resemble any words that I would ever write to anyone, ever. My normal workaround is to just ignore the suggestions and write my own texts, complete with fully spelled-out words and complete, correctly punctuated sentences. But now I have to make sure that I don't inadvertently hit send on an auto-response and make myself look like a jerk. 

*****
Later that weekend, I had a dream. I was in Taiwan with some coworkers, including the one to whom my phone was so rude. Yes, Taiwan. A third coworker was, for some reason not known to me, holding on to some valuables for us. We walked down the corridor of our hotel to ask our third coworker for our things, and then we noticed that we were on an airplane. The plane began to taxi, and it was too late for us to get off. "Where is this plane going?" I asked my coworker.

"Shanghai," she said, barely looking up from her Chinese-language newspaper.

"We don't want to go to Shanghai!" the first coworker and I exclaimed. But it was too late. The plane had already taken off.

It was a strangely realistic dream, the kind from which you awaken slightly panicked and disoriented, with your brain straddling reality and the dream world. Even as I thought about what to make for lunch that day, I also worried about what the Chinese authorities would do with me when I arrived in Shanghai with no travel documents. It wasn't until halfway through my coffee that I realized that I had dreamed about actually being Shanghaied.

*****
I changed high schools after my freshman year. At the time, it seemed like a big deal. Now, 35 years later, I sometimes forget that I went to the first high school. One of my old neighborhood friends invited me to a Facebook group for my old school's upcoming reunion, and although I have no plans to attend, it was nice that people remembered me.

When you look at the Facebook profiles of old friends and acquaintances, you compare. You see their lives (such as people represent their lives on social media), and you wonder how yours measures up. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you're not one of those people who looks in the mirror because you literally don't know what you look like. Maybe you don't worry at all about what other people think about you. Maybe you're pretty clear on the difference between your friends' and neighbors' social media images and their real selves. Maybe you don't wake up expecting to spend the rest of your life in a Chinese prison. Maybe you don't worry that your phone will go rogue and be insufferably snotty on your behalf.

*****
It's the end of the day and I am worried about the world. I'm worried about displaced and homeless people who can't find welcome anywhere in the world. I'm worried about pipe bombs. I'm worried about systematic devaluation of human life.

Mother Teresa said that if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. It's the end of the day, and I'm going to make some banana chocolate chip muffins that won't solve any crises or end any wars or cure any of my ever-growing number of neuroses and fears. They'll just be a nice breakfast treat for teenage boys on a cold morning. Love is the only thing that has ever changed anything and the only thing that ever will.