Learning to Live Simply: The Battle with Technology
The view from our bus ride home. Almost a full year into my service with JVC, I look around on my bus ride home and realize I am the only passenger not looking down at my phone. I have only dusty scenery or people-watching for entertainment. All over the planet, we are accustomed to reaching for our phones unconsciously, sometimes it's the first thing we grab when we wake up. If we want to know what other film that actor has been in, we open up our web browser. If we feel uncomfortable in a public setting, swipe, unlock and pretend that something is keeping us busy enough that we’ve tuned out our surroundings. One of the values of the JVC community is Simple Living, which is usually our explanation for why we don’t have cell phones. “We want to live in solidarity with our neighbors” or “We don’t need the luxuries of our lives back home”. But technology is cheap. And many members of the Habitat community and beyond who may have little access to water, food, or other