The most useful teacher I’ve had this past year has been my phone. Oddly enough, it taught me the most when I didn’t pick it up.

Before this realization, I had no idea how often I would be somewhere with nothing to do for ten seconds. Situations like a queue, waiting at a red light, between washing dishes and taking out the trash, just passing by the counter where the phone usually is, and an inner drive to check it. There was no buzz, no notification, just a small itch to double-check just in case. I have watched my hand do its thing a thousand times, and never asked myself what it was reaching for.

The hand is reaching for a diversion. The phone is the most convenient one.

After 40-odd years, I’ve come to think most of us are running a quiet euthanasia on our own feelings. Something uncomfortable starts to rise, a little fear or guilt, and before it can fully arrive, we put it down with whatever is nearest. It has never been easier. Shopping, sugar, scrolling, porn, a drink, the choices are enormous and always available. The small voice of discomfort has never had so many pillows to be suffocated by.

Strangely enough, everyone knows. They may not use these exact words, but lay it out, and everyone nods. Yes, they say, I run from things, into this or that. Nobody is really fooled. We just avoid looking at it because it goes against everything we’ve built so far.

But the thing being avoided is deeper than it first looks. Say your marriage is coming apart after twenty years. The divorce is the surface. Sitting under it is usually the fear of being alone. So affairs happen, as does searching for attachment outside the household. Say your boss is grinding you into the floor. The boss is the surface. Under him is the fear that you could not earn this money anywhere else, and that you are afraid to test it. The situation is just the costume the fear puts on so you never have to call it by its name.

My costume was the phone.

So months ago, I started catching the reach before it finished. When the hand moved, I would ask myself why I did it. What am I actually after. I used to search for the driver, like fear, guilt, or anger, explaining the need for euthanasia as trying to soothe those emotions, to make them go away. After nothing changed for months, I’ve realized maybe fighting them wasn’t the answer.

Then I started just noticing them. “You are angry.” Without searching for why or how to stop being angry. Once I could see the emotion, calling it out would let the craving pass on its own, the way a craving does when you finally look straight at it.

The mind always tries to avoid the silence, so it uses different routes. When I managed to end the phone route, my mind shifted to imaginary arguments. I would catch myself rehearsing perfect comebacks for arguments that never happened. Once I realized what I was doing, I started asking the same question: “What are you running from?”

I have been playing this cat-and-mouse game with my own fears for months. On a heavy day, they are loud, and it’s difficult to see clearly through them. On a light one they barely show up at all. Averaged out, slowly, they are getting smaller.

The part I did not expect is how simple it is to reduce its effect. I cannot stop the reaching as it was wired in long before I had any say. Pushing against it only makes it change shape. The one thing that seems to work is watching. I name the emotion and then do nothing with it, letting it be seen. Seen, it tends to go quiet.

The biggest thing I got out of this is remembering a version of me I almost forgot existed. From before the exits, before I had the drive to run away from something. It was easier before phones existed, but that’s not really why. Back then, I wasn’t terrified of ten empty seconds.

I am not all the way back there. But I get a minute of it now and then, standing at a red light with my hand staying exactly where it is, and it is the closest thing to free I have felt in years.