"Banana," I said to John. "If things get weird enough, just break the no-talking rule — say ‘banana’, and we’ll escape together. OK?"
We shut the car door and nervously lugged our bags towards the ominous building.
Our world for 10 days. John and I camped in (separate) tents behind a hill.
It was January 9, 2019. A week or so earlier, John and I were enjoying a pretty typical 19-year-old’s summer. We did a roady to Gisborne, spent three nights at Rhythm & Vines and captured the whole thing on our phones.
Many yarns were had in the pockets of time between scrolls. We’d constantly check our phones to keep up with everyone’s summers, as well as local news, global news and viral videos.
Now, as we arrived at a 10-day Vipassana meditation course, we were in for the exact opposite. No yarns, no music, no eye contact, no reading, no writing and definitely no phones or media.
There was no plan and no expectations either. We just heard the course was free and extremely difficult, so we figured it’d be worthwhile. Well ... John didn’t hear much actually. I asked if he’d join two hours before getting on the road, and I didn’t share details on what I was dragging him into. If I had, maybe he wouldn’t have come.
As we prepared to hand in our devices at the front desk, we crammed in a last scroll and fired off final messages. Hopefully, this would leave us as up to date as possible, and help the world survive while we were offline.
We exchanged a last "Good luck bro", the Noble Silence began and we braced ourselves for a schedule that looked quite different from Rhythm & Vines.
On the first morning I awoke to an atmosphere at peace and a mind at civil war. Outside, I heard birds chirping and smooth meditative chants. Inside, I heard on loop: "Mate, what are you doing?" and "Is this really how long a day is?!"
Zombie-walks between the tent, meditation hall and grass lawn were accompanied by regrets and severe back pain. Meditating on a mat is a surprisingly physical ordeal. Rugby and kickboxing trainings were much easier for my body.
We spent the first three days focusing on the breath, and the last seven focusing on sensations throughout the body by scanning it up and down. Initially, I felt nothing. I figured I’d fallen for a hoax.
But after days of blind effort I realised that the mind is like a muscle and mine was benefiting from an immensely effective training regime. Squats strengthen legs. Meditation strengthens mind.
Sleeping became difficult because I felt so many sensations on my face, like itchiness, tightness and heat. Thinking became confronting because I developed a similar sensitivity to what actually goes through my mind all day.
My flow of thought became a tsunami of insight, revealing what occupies me, what shouldn’t and what should.
It was the hardest and most impactful 10 days of my life. About a quarter of the other people quit, but neither John or I said "banana" (or anything else really) and we made it through.
I walked back to the car with many a mental and spiritual weight off my back. One of them was my pernicious addiction.
After 10 days without a phone or media, I finally gained perspective on their true impact in my life. They’re basically just a vortex sitting in my pocket, sucking away all the things that Vipassana taught me to protect: presence, appreciation for my surroundings and a firm control of what I let inside my head.
But maybe that’s just a selfish point of view. What about all my peers who had missed 10 days of my updates? What about their 10 days of updates that I missed?
What about all those news stories I wasn’t aware of? So I finally checked in online and that’s when I had the most freeing realisation of all: Life goes on.
While I was away, my peers had posted cool photos of their lives, a couple of British tourists got kicked out of New Zealand for causing trouble and there was a dodgy election result in Venezuela.
And ... life went on. It clearly all happened just fine without me knowing about it, and my peers got on just fine without following my life either. Most media doesn’t impact me (luckily), and most people don’t think about me (as they shouldn’t).
Catching up on things a week or so out of date made the irrelevance of this media particularly obvious — but it was all equally irrelevant on the day it popped up, even if my notifications would’ve fooled me into feeling otherwise. Phone and media FOMO is an illusion. Life goes on — just not when you stop living yours to watch everyone else’s.
I reflect on this five years later as someone who is totally back on the crack. My iPhone tells me I picked it up 60 times per day last week (once every 16 waking minutes) and I feel uneasy even going for a walk without the little vortex in my pocket.
I’m with the 60% of Americans who sleep with their phone at night, the 46% who check it on dates and the 57% who consider themselves addicted, according to a recent survey.
There’s a growing suspicion about phone and media reliance among my 20- and 30-year-old peers. Nowadays, people don’t find me as weird for not having Instagram or not reading the news, and when someone pulls out their phone in the middle of a group yarn, I’m not the only one who gives them a bit of stick for it.
Detaching from phones and media isn’t simple. They’re both in the middle of basically everything. I need my phone to pay for things and to chat with employees in four different countries.
I work in media, so I need to follow some to stay up to date in my field. Plus, occasionally there are events so important they’re worth knowing about. I’m sure it’s much more complicated with kids.
Obviously, most people can’t just take 10 days off the grid with two hours’ notice. But most people can test small steps, like leaving the phone at home before a walk or testing some of the creative solutions that are popping up.
For example, Flora is a free app that discourages phone use by granting you custody of a digital tree. Your tree slowly grows the longer you keep Flora open. If you close Flora to use other apps, your tree dies.
Brick takes things a step further. It blocks a selection of apps and you can only unlock them by physically tapping the phone on your "brick" — a small, 3-D-printed, fridge magnet-sized device. People often place the brick in different rooms or leave it at home when going out. It’s the only way to guarantee their temptations won’t get the best of them.
I wrote this because I’ve been feeling like my current phone reliance is insurmountable.
But looking at the tools available and reflecting back on Vipassana, I’m reminded: at any point, we’re only 10 days away from breaking the spell.
■ Xavier English is still struggling with phone addiction.
