Fourteen People Waiting

What I Saw When I Didn’t Have My Phone

The restaurant shall remain unnamed to protect the innocent.

But I have to tell you—when I placed the order on the app, I knew what kind of ordeal I was getting into. Ordering from this restaurant is always a chaotic experience. Still, having sent in my order thirty minutes prior, I (naively) expected I would walk right in and right out.

However, the Burrito Gods had other plans on this day.

I walked into the restaurant with not a single person sitting at a table. Instead, fourteen people (I had time to count) stood waiting for their app-ordered food. Leaning against the wall in resignation, I joined the other modern-day hunter-gatherers. Save for the hustle and bustle of the kitchen crew, the dining area was dead silent.

Having left my phone in the car, I studied each person in between quick glances for a brown bag with my name on it. What I noticed made me profoundly sad—fourteen people with their heads bowed in unison, silently scrolling their devices. I don’t make this observation in a judgy way. Had I known I would be waiting for thirty minutes, I would have taken my phone into the restaurant as well. What I witnessed convicted me. I have truly never seen anything like it.

But this reflection isn’t about condemning our insatiable addiction to these little rectangular things.

I promise.

People have asked me over the years why there are weeks or months when I don’t write. My simple answer is that I have to live life in order to have experiences and stories. If all I do is go to work, come home, watch television, and scroll social media, there isn’t much to write about. If I am preoccupied or distracted, I miss moments. I miss the beauty around me. I miss conversations. I miss the uniqueness of people.

For example.

On that day, had I been on my phone and lost in the feed, I would have missed two young couples who came into the restaurant together. They had not placed an order through the app. However, because of the backup in orders, they had to wait in line. As they stood together, they talked and told stories and laughed. For the fifteen minutes that I watched them, not one of them pulled out their phone. It was a wild contrast—two couples alive in conversation, surrounded by everyone else with heads bowed in quiet absorption.

I may look back at this post in five years and realize that making this point was futile. That facing an ever-growing tsunami was a laughable endeavor. Maybe this inertia is inevitable. Who knows. But for today, I believe it is a battle worth waging—of not completely losing ourselves, losing our humanity for the convenience of always being somewhere else.

Question

What stories, people, or beauty have I scrolled past in real life?

Peace,

Brandon

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