My Phone, My Saviour

I Know I'm Plagiarizing ... This isn't the first... and I'm sure it won't be the last ... But this article from my newspaper fit so well into my Blog, I just had to have it here... so there!

THE SPEAKING TREE

My Phone, My Saviour

One morning, following my usual morning routine, i went into my studio and turned on my computer. The lines were down, however,and i was unable to log on to the Internet. 

So i did what many do. I picked up my smart phone. Within seconds i had checked local weather, the definition of antinomy, world news, the status of a UPS delivery, my email inbox, and i did a quick social network scan. All was well and i felt happy. My faithful phone had pulled me back from the brink of disconnection.

And it was then, at that moment, that epiphany struck and i realised how much i loved my phone. That the little electronic object cradled in my palm had evoked in me a very real human emotion. For a moment i saw my phone as a friend, even a saviour. 

Expression of human emotions therefore, even our most elevated ones, are not reserved for loved ones and God. They are evoked by anything that provides what loved ones and God provide: a greater sense of value and security. 

What if my loving my phone awakens the soul in my phone? What if my loving my Jeep or home awakens the soul in them, or the reverse? Does loving them awaken the soul in me? What if soul is not what we think it is, and its origin and purpose not what we believe its origin and purpose to be? 

Has anyone ever captured a soul-yeti of the afterlife? Examined one in a bottle or test tube? Do we have photographs or footprints of souls? By what measure can we state without doubt that souls exist, that our body comes with a soul when we are born; an appendage of necessity equal to that of our heart, lungs and brain? 

A now departed and very dear friend of mine once asserted that some people were born soulless and for this reason human life gives rise to vicious persons as well like dictators, cons, rapists and murderers. 

We are faced here with a frustrating antinomy: That we can neither prove nor disprove that a soul exists. The moot question is: Are we here? 

Right now you think you are reading these words in your present while i am here in my present writing them. Are we? How can we be certain we are human and have human vision? 

“But we are human,” you say. “We have bodies; a fleshy mass that shudders in the cold and sweats under the gaze of a noon day sun.” And i agree we do, we do feel these things but does being aware of our physical body constitute proof of the existence of that body? 

It is by human definition that we certify ourselves as human and living, but what of the bug’s point of view, or that of the stars, time, space and God? Is man by any other definition still a man? Descartes, stated “I think, therefore I am.” Perhaps all that we require to bring ourselves, our souls and God into existence is to think them.

In the end we are, or are not, what we think we are. And the importance of either – either matters, or it does not. Greater clarity would be helpful. Just a sec, let me check, there may be an app for that on my phone. 

The writer, Thomas M Easley, was artist-in-residence at The Times of India in the 1990s.