Hi,
This is Shannon Algio,
And I'm so excited to share with you the opening poem from my book.
The power in your hands.
Liberate yourself from attachment to technology.
And the opening poem to this book.
Is one that is near and dear to my heart because this poem flowed out of me in a moment that I didn't expect it.
And sometimes those are when the best poems come forward.
It's called Reaching for the Phone I Left at Home on Purpose.
I'm going to read it for you here in a moment.
Reaching for the phone I left at home on purpose.
Let me tell you the story and the backdrop to how this poem came to be.
So I was living in the Santa Monica mountains.
Outside of Los Angeles in a tiny canyon town called Topanga Canyon.
When I was in graduate school,
I actually wrote my first book,
Trust Your Truth,
There.
And I quarantined during the pandemic in that canyon house in the Santa Monica Mountains with peacocks and bobcats and mountain lions and bunnies.
And I went to grad school.
And there came a point in grad school,
After many,
Many months of consideration and reflection of hemming and hawing,
Where the rubber was meeting the road and I needed to choose my research topic.
And one of the topics,
One of two big ones that I was considering was this connection between the psyche,
The soul,
And smartphone attachment or compulsive smartphone use and exploring my own relationship with my phone.
And As a practice to get off of my phone during the pandemic and attending all of these grad school courses online,
I would leave my phone at home and walk to this cafe in Topanga.
And this was usually at least 90 minutes of complete phone-free time.
I would leave my phone at home.
I often would turn it off or put it in a drawer.
And then I'd head out and go on this walk and I would just be with my thoughts.
And be with nature and get to the cafe and order my Americano.
And on this one day.
.
.
I got my drink,
I sat down,
I remember.
.
.
Getting out my notebook and my pen,
And then my hand reached for my pocket.
Just reflexively,
This habituated,
Somatic,
Embodied move,
My hand reached for my thigh.
And I remember,
Obviously,
I was like,
I don't have my phone with me.
I left my phone at home on purpose.
But on this particular day,
I must have been open or I was just really feeling my experience a little bit more deeply and I felt this wave of grief come over me.
As I imagined.
All of the many moments where I'm about to start reading or writing in my journal or doing something meaningful for my soul but instead my hand grabs for the phone and then that phone intercepts my moment.
And so on this day,
Realizing that my phone was not with me,
Of course.
I grabbed for my pen,
Feeling this wave of grief.
And curiosity.
And I began to write this poem.
Which I will share with you now.
This is reaching for the phone I left at home on purpose.
And I invite you to listen and just notice how you feel in your body.
Notice what images or imaginings or sensations or emotions come up for you.
Reaching for the phone I left at home on purpose.
Liberation from the digital cell.
A prison of colorful,
Careful,
Calculated design.
I freed myself.
The cell keys were in my hand the whole time.
But that phone sticks to my palm like Christmas coins cling to the white-taped hands of the sticky bandits in Home Alone 2,
Lost in New York.
Who knew hitting the lottery would steal my soul and distract me from millions of moments of presence and purpose and peace?
It's difficult to mourn the unlived life.
Who would I be without this weapon of mass distraction?
Who would I have become?
Would I be a comedian,
Writing jokes and receiving belly laughs instead of cheap likes?
Would I be a sensuous lover,
Meeting men in parks and bars and restaurants,
Instead of scrolling for the man I'll never find?
Would I be deeply steeped in writing a novel?
Immersed in a world of my mind's own design?
Instead of torn apart in thousands of fragmented pieces of cat vids and TikToks and influencers and trauma porn.
Who profits from the grand theft of my soul?
This macrochip I carry with me where'er I go.
How do I find the lost one I might have become?
Do I still have a chance to break him free?
And embrace his becoming.
Do I still have a chance to break him free?
And embrace his becoming.
And this book.
In your hands or in your ears,
The power in your hands,
Was my answer to that question and to that prayer,
Really,
Of,
You know,
As Mary Oliver says in her beloved and famed poem,
The Summer Day,
She asks,
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
And that inspired me.
That inspires me right now.
It gives me goosebumps.
I've read this poem so many times on so many podcasts and interviews and stages on the book tour.
And I still get goosebumps reading it because it is a prayer of homecoming for me.
Do I still have a chance to break him free and embrace his becoming?
And the answer to that question if you're watching this now.
If you're alive right now,
Breathing and feeling and sensing and being.
The answer to that question.
Is yes.
Because we have this moment.
We have the agency to be the authors and architects of our lives.
We don't have to be consumed by the digital realm.
We can reclaim.
Our attention and our focus and our souls.
And In each moment,
We are the generators,
We are the creators,
We are the architects of the lives that we are living.
Are we in complete control of it all?
Hell no!
But we are here and we get to participate in what we build with our own two hands and our wildly beating hearts.
So thank you for participating in this moment and this reading of this poem with me.
It's such an honor to get to share it with you and I hope that you take it and you run with it.
Alright,
Sending lots of love.
Bye for now.
