Who do you suppose was the first person to look at a telephone and desperately want to call someone — but know he can’t?
Before the telephone, two people were either in the same place or they weren’t. After the telephone came along, time on the phone — and later other forms of live conversations such as chat and FaceTime — became reasonable facsimiles of the real thing. Not as good as touching someone, of course, but far more satisfying than nothing.
As more and more people got telephones — and the sound quality got better over the years — there had to come a point at which someone looked at his or her phone for the first time and wanted to call someone that he or she couldn’t call. I wonder when that was.
I didn’t have periods such as this early in my life, but it’s become common now. I want to hear her voice. I want to hear her words. I want to listen to her thoughts and emotions. But I can’t.
What if emotional baggage we carry isn’t really our core issue?
‘Citizen of the world’? Better to be sovereign than citizen of anywhere
Love’s closest counterfeit sounds like love but acts like selfish need
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone