Sunday evening, I looked a long time at the weekly screen time my phone sent me

On Sunday evening, while I waited for the rice to cook, my phone buzzed once. It was a notification with last week's screen time summed up. A number over six hours a day was displayed in large type. I looked at it for a long time. It said it was forty minutes more than the week before.

I wondered if this was how I had been living. Thoughts followed one after another: if I had read a book in that time, if I had exercised. Nobody had scolded me, yet I felt scolded all the same. I resolved to cut it down sharply starting Monday, and then remembered that I had made that resolution many times already.

Steam began to rise from the rice cooker. I couldn't even dismiss the notification and stood there holding the screen.

The week behind the number

I swiped away and opened still().

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, I give to you. Don’t let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.

John 14:27 (WEB)

"Neither let it be fearful." I paused for a while on the last part of the verse. What had risen in me at the sight of the number was less self-reproach than fear, a feeling of "is this really okay?" Out of that fear I had been scoring myself alone and piling up resolutions. Reading this verse doesn't make my screen time shrink. But I tried recalling those six hours. A video I had flicked through absently on the way home, the time spent answering a photo a friend sent, the screen I switched on at midnight when I couldn't sleep, all of it was mixed in there. It was hard to call it all a waste. It was also a way of getting through a tiring day.

The sound came that the rice was done. I simply closed the notification. I made no new resolution at all.

I warmed the soup and sat at the table. I laid the phone face down, and left it that way while I took the first spoonful.

Today's Breath — Lay your phone face down and breathe out slowly once before the first bite of your meal.