Today, I left my phone plugged into the car charger.

Twice!

At first, I tried to be relaxed about it. “Maybe it’s fine,” I told myself. “A little distance from the world could be healthy.”

Then I stepped outside and realized how completely untrue that was.

I wanted to check the time but no watch. I saw a moment that was quietly perfect but no camera. I felt thirsty but no wallet buy buy drinks. I took a wrong turn but no map, no GPS navigation.

That’s when it hit me: technology isn’t just “convenience.” It has quietly compressed a dozen life organs into one slim rectangle.

When I have it, I feel complete. When I don’t, the dependence shows instantly like someone pulled out a bone of me, didn’t know I were standing on.

What scared me more was realizing I couldn’t recite a single phone number from my memory.

Everyone I know lives inside apps. Without two-factor authentication, I can’t even enter my own accounts.

Passwords forgotten. Device missing. Verification impossible. And suddenly, the world locks me out.

For a moment, I thought: if this happened in a foreign country, I’d probably end up singing on the street just to earn a train ticket home.

The first half of the day was pure panic. Not fear of getting lost but fear that the entire world had gone offline without me.

Then, slowly, something settled. I started to feel like this wasn’t random. Like the day was trying to show me something.

How much I rely on these conveniences. How many invisible weak points I carry. How much of my life I’ve outsourced to a machine. I haven’t fully decoded the message yet.

But I know this much: life doesn’t casually remove something important twice.

Maybe it was reminding me of this: I think I'm free, but I am actually tied very tightly.



—— XC Scribbles · 貳拾貳 XXII 📵