By G. E.
Shuman
I just spent over an hour of my life
painstakingly deleting junk e-mail and other ‘stuff’ from my two addresses on
my phone. As I was doing so, I suddenly realized that the entire process seemed
far too familiar and that I had spent a similar hour doing the same thing several
weeks ago. So, I said to myself, “Self, what are you doing this for, anyway? Brand
new junk is just going to appear in this same spot within days, you know.” I kept deleting, and kept deleting, and kept
deleting. Delete, delete, delete.
By the time I got to the second
account I simply pushed the Select key and then Select All and then Delete. Hummm.
Before I hit that final button I did (momentarily) think about the fact that a
lot of my deletions would be things in that list of mail that I had saved
there. Some of those mail items were quotes, facts, stupid jokes, or profound
statements that, within the last few weeks, I had saved or written myself. (No,
I didn’t write any of the profound statements. Those were saved from greater
brains than this old one.) Some of the stupid jokes may have been mine.
In any case, I hit the delete button
on the screen and suddenly the junk, spam, stupid jokes, saved profound
statements and everything else was simply gone from my phone, and from my life,
probably forever. I would get to live without the junk mail but also without
those things I had once wanted to remember.
I thought I would feel a bit of regret or even remorse about those saved
things, simply because there must have been some good reason for saving them in
the first place. Right? Well, evidently there wasn’t, as I truly felt nothing but
relief at the bit of simplifying of my life that I had accomplished with one
little button push.
If anything, it was a bit exhilarating
to dump the mental junk I had collected on a device that is supposed to make
life easier. It was almost as if a weight had been lifted from me, by ‘throwing
out’ those electronic, weightless but somehow weighty files.
My phone somehow seems a bit lighter now, as do my thoughts.
