REVIEW: Howard Lewis — Leave Your Phone at the Door: The Joy of OFFLINE (BOOK)
OFFLINE is a new life philosophy engineered and instituted by Howard Lewis, covered in his new book Leave Your Phone at the Door: The Joy of OFFLINE. As a professional who works remotely now, around the clock, in a schedule of my own design, I saw this book and felt inclined to throw it across the room! I initially thought being told to lay off my phone was a crime that should get you imprisoned for years! Luckily my rational mind kicked in, and I started to realize I suffer the very affliction OFFLINE is meant to address. I’m a full-blown addict to my technology, singling out my phone for special shout-out.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-lewis-offline/
OFFLINE as the title suggests is about slowing down, putting the tech away (literally and metaphorically), and getting back to basics. Basics meaning the thing so many people are missing, whether it be represented through statistics-breaking levels of depression, isolation, and lack of intimacy, coupled with the divorce rate rocking the US. Leave Your Phone at the Door is an elixir to what causes these kinds of phenomena. In empathetic, bell-clear, sensible prose, Lewis walks the reader through how to balance their lives in the information age with the missing piece. That piece being human connection. In totality, what constitutes the human experience.
“The creation of the OFFLINE concept was partly motivated by my realization that many of these basic life skills only make a cameo appearance in our coddled and overweened new century,” Lewis writes. “The excessive use of technology has dulled our minds and our senses.
An awareness of the land and soil beneath our feet would represent a decent start. It is instructive to note the emergence of the digital detox retreat as a simple means for individuals to engage with nature, detach themselves from any media sources and properly appreciate the value of peace and quiet.
But why is it so difficult to switch off voluntarily? What is so gripping about yet another newsfeed or banality on social media? Very little from where I am standing but there is an apparent desperation to keep up with events and to be perceived as being at the top of your game. It is a self- imposed addiction to attention and relevance and meaning that advertises both weakness and self-obsession.”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Leave-Your-Phone-Door-OFFLINE/dp/1635769396
He clarifies: “…The essence of OFFLINE is twofold. On the one hand, it is simply the antithesis of online. Not that online is all bad. On the contrary, online is rather good, but what is not good at all is this latter- day obsession with it, whereby all those skills you learned at your mother’s knee, like reading and writing and talking, are becoming dying arts. Yet the curious thing is that humans are social animals by nature and that physical interaction is a fundamental part of our being.”
To reiterate, it’s about being human. It’s a welcome relief to read something qualifying as self-help that is, for lack of a better description, not full of it. What Lewis talks about here is just straight truths, and a philosophy built from those truths that is sane, rational, and genuinely addresses something endemic in our society. Job well done.
Colin Jordan
