The Walrus got braces

There was a time in my life when all I wanted, more than anything in this entire world, was to get braces. I probably used up three years of birthday wishes for braces, and that's huge when you are a kid. It wasn't that I needed braces. What I considered dramatically unfortunate at the time was that my teeth were straight as a line. It was that I wanted braces. But when you are a kid, needs and wants are one in the same. I wanted them because all of my friends had them. It killed me that they could match rubber band colors with the season -- orange and black for Halloween, red and green for Christmas, green and white for St. Patrick's Day. The icing on the cake was when my brother got braces. I remember thinking, What a waste for boy! He's not even going to use all the colors.

From sunset on Friday to sunset yesterday, I participated in National Day of Unplugging, a day encouraging us to "disconnect our devices and reconnect with one another." For me though, it was just a personal challenge. Less interested in whether or not the experience would be a refreshing one, I was simply curious to see if I was capable.

As is true with national days of anything in a melting pot like America, I was hard-pressed to find others who were in observance. This posed two challenges: finding alternative means of reference and entertainment and resisting visual (gadgets within reach) and auditory (ring tones and alerts) temptations. Because this occurred on a weekend and I was mostly amongst family, concerns like missing urgent calls and safety were not so much an issue.

Long story short, arbitrarily disconnecting is like wearing braces when your teeth are already perfectly straight. For three weeks this past summer, my days were mostly void of instant technological gratification. The company of my childhood friend along with the encapsulating sights of Spain, Italy, and France made it so I could have cared less. Yesterday, however, as I waited for my lunch at an old favorite, I would much rather have been browsing my Twitter feed than unintentionally staring at people at other tables. The good news is that most of them hadn't noticed me, for they had been looking down at their phones. I felt kind of left out, not being able to do the same.

I couldn't take pictures throughout the day. I couldn't call in dinner reservations. Granted, these are not life or death situations, but they were minor, unnecessary inconveniences. Possibly the most ironic moment of my 24-hour disconnect was yesterday morning, as my brother and parents sat together on a couch enjoying a YouTube clip, while I sat on the opposite couch, stubbornly boycotting what this family Kodak moment entailed. What was intended to bring me closer to people had only driven me away.

At the end of my technology-fast, I whipped out my phone. The feeling was akin to coming to the surface of a swimming pool gasping for breath after seeing how long you could stay under water (Okay, that may be a bit dramatic, but it sounds good). I scrolled through the texts, missed calls, emails, tweets, and Facebook notifications. None were urgent, but each connected me to someone that I care about.

The minor personal victory was just that. I don't feel like I've scaled mountains, which is good, because I shouldn't. Our lives are enriched when we take advantage of all possible resources we have at our fingertips, from skills to people to technological innovations and everything in between and beyond. Purposefully ignoring or fixating on anyone or anything to prove a point will simply disable us. It's all about understanding the difference between needs and wants.

Back to my wired world, I feel that the equilibrium has been restored. To some extent, wires are a necessity in my life. Just, not in my mouth (what was I ever thinking?!)