Last night I was looking at the call timer on my cell phone and discovered that in less than a year it had crept to over 98 hours. That means I have spent over four days of my life this past year on the phone. At first, the thought of this made me somewhat disgusted at the seeming waste, but then I started to think back over all of the conversations that made up those 98 hours.
Of course there was the normal fare; calls of inquiry and planning and rendezvous, calls to check in and check up, and the calls that are a part of the everyday business of life. But among the mundane were the phone calls and conversations that shaped my life this past year. There was the phone call that summoned me to the hospital for the passing of a hero. There was the frantic call to California securing a place to live. There were the many unreturned calls that marked the end of one friendship, along with the countless conversations that strengthened another. There were the daily calls from my mom that meant I would have at least talked to someone that day. There were calls from the friends I left behind, and calls from the new friends I’ve made. There were the weeks of emotion-laden calls to Texas (when I could get through) hoping for some kind of good news during a great disaster. And there was the call that carried a birthday greeting all the way from Africa.
In the end, I’ve come to see my phone as less of a way of communicating and more of a way of connecting. What becomes most meaningful is not what is said, but what is shared, whether it is words, silence, tears, laughter, memories, or ideas. I can now look at those four days not as loss, but as gain.
