Due to bad weather on an island I found myself doing a very long and beautiful trek. The paths were inaccessible and hardly traveled and for long stretches we were without a field, with the mobile phone disconnected. Then every now and then a notification came and I realized that we had passed close to an antenna. In reality, not only a notification arrives, but a rush of messages, accumulated over the time we were off.
There was everything: latest news from the various newspapers to which I subscribe, activity notifications from my friends on social networks on which we are connected, some comments or likes to some old posts, a couple of messages from press offices that offered exclusively an unmissable research on influencers, a couple more from my collaborators on how the work in the editorial office was progressing. When the smartphone returned to a reachable area it was impossible not to look at the notifications and immediately fan the most urgent ones, forgetting for a moment the spectacular passages that surrounded us. Then the cell phone became isolated again and the trek resumed its true rhythm, which is an inner rhythm.
At one point I asked myself: were all those messages really urgent? and those notifications? What would have happened if I had decided to disconnect the phone for a few hours? That I would really enjoy those moments. But I didn’t, because maybe the children or the parents might need me. But there is a solution: today smartphones allow you to set the “do not disturb” mode with which only a few chosen contacts can interrupt us. Trust me: it is mandatory to do so. Also to discover that the rest of life we now live at a pace that is marked by smartphone notifications: everything seems urgent, everything to do immediately. But does this allow us to really live? To go deep into things? Is it possible to create, invent, dream, if there is always a notification to interrupt us? At least on vacation, try do not disturb.
.