Into The Mystic

Yesterday I was on the subway, listening to music or something. We came  to a stop and a gentlemen walked by me to exit the car. As he did, a button on his jacket caught my headphone cord, which pulled my phone out of my pocket, flipped it up in the air, spun it around, and then we both watched it fall into the crack between the subway car and the platform.

He looked at me, and me at him. He half-apologized; it was a very weird event seeing the phone spin up and down through this 3 inch crack. A guy next to me shouted "No Way!" The doors closed and the train moved on.

Shouting man asked me what I was going to do. I shrugged, dejected, and said "I suppose I will go to a store and buy a new one and set it up." He went back to looking down at his phone, I could see his hand tense up as he held his device tighter.

So later that morning of course I went into a store and bought a new phone and went back to my office and set it up. It took longer than I wanted, so part of my day was spent restoring things. I lost some pictures, apps, songs that weren't backed up. But I got it back and running eventually.

This could be a story of how amazing our technology and devices are. After all less than one day later I have most of my things and you wouldn't know the difference. All my phone numbers and email addresses magically appeared - even some old voice mail messages. If I didn't write this you wouldn't know it happened.

This could also be a story of how technology doesn't work and we are slaves to digital devices - I lost some pictures that weren't backed up of my mother-in-law's 80th birthday party the other night, as well as some gorgeous shots of mountains in Utah where I was lucky to be last week. Some apps too, maybe. Probably some email and I missed some text messages. I was stressed being disconnected while this happened.

Instead, I don't think it has either of those meanings, and it probably  doesn't have any meaning whatsoever. A few years ago I lost a chunk of archived emailed - a few years worth. Some interesting things in there - a few key digital years of my life in the technology business, gone, forever.  It sucked.  Whatever. We move on. Our technology is wonderful and amazing and connects us in ways we couldn't imagine a few years ago. It can also disconnect us if we don't remember that the crack between the subway car and the platform is only a few inches wide, but pieces of our lives can fall through there. It's both things.

"We were born before the wind,  Also younger than the sun"