The right Attitude towards modern Gadgets

You know that I love technics, that I am fully in favour of the progress of science and the technical development that brings us machines and systems that can help us in our daily lives. Yesterday, too, I wrote in favour of all those gadgets and technical items that we have in our homes, at work and in our pockets. I want to say however that you also need a certain attitude to deal with them in the right way – and not to let your life be controlled by them.

I am usually close to the computer when I am at home. The whole day long you can reach us by mail and we know what is going on with our website. It is logical, it is not only our business, we love our work and the computer is a medium to communicate with the whole world. Just like the phone for others. Now everybody does not only have a landline phone but also or maybe even exclusively a mobile so that he is always available. Even emails are nowadays always deliverable on peoples’ phones. You expect a person to get your message on the same day – actually even within the next hour. Or minute.

This is however the point where I think it gets difficult – when you have to be always available. When your phone does not become a device that you use for your convenience but an instrument of stress and pressure with which people can get you at any time, wherever you are. When you have to leave everything you are doing just to pick up your phone, to read the latest message and to reply the emails you just got.

I have seen people picking up their phone while they are eating, others checking and replying their messages while they are sitting in a cinema hall and even doctors who pick up the phone while they are in a consultation with a patient.

It happens often enough that people who come here for a retreat like the Ayurveda Yoga Holiday just leave all their gadgets at home or switch them off as soon as they enter the Ashram. We offer them to use our visitors’ computer but they decline – they don’t want to see any email, they don’t want to hear from anyone and especially their work, they don’t want updates about what is going on everywhere, they just want to be not available for three or four weeks.

You can however do something against this in your daily life, too. You need to change your attitude a bit. See that you are operating the machine, not the other way round. You have to shift your attention back into the presence back to what you are actually doing here and now. You don’t need to be available always but can just switch the phone off for some time, too.

If you are doing something important, do only that, otherwise you won’t even remember afterwards what exactly you did and you may not do it properly. If you are together with someone and have a conversation, give attention to this person. It is also a matter of respect – you think the other one is more important than any phone call or message and you let the other one know this if you ignore your phone in that time.

Enjoy your electronic devices, use them with all of their functions – but please with the right attitude!