The Light Phone is the only phone intentionally designed to be used as little as possible. Like how we have different shoes or jackets for different occasions, the Light Phone is your casual “second” phone that encourages you to leave behind the smartphone and all of its distractions.
Getaway's aim is to get overworked and over-connected folks to reconnect with nature. We build what we call Outposts, which are groups of tiny cabins in the woods two hours or less from major cities, rentable by the night. Each cabin is outfitted with everything you need to disconnect and to simply enjoy being out in nature with the company of others.
Each month we feature a member of our community. This isn’t any of that (air quotes) stand-up, pillar of the community glad handing you see in traditional organizations. This is someone who pledged to the Code of Conduct:
An urban sweat lodge. A place where people sweat and get delicious “me time.” Shape House is often referred to as an oasis, a calm space to remove you from the brouhaha of a city. People come for different reasons because it serves different needs. Some come because it helps them sleep. Some because it helps them lose weight. Some because it helps their skin.
I run naked. By “naked,” I am referring to the concept of running without gadgets. So I was shocked when, at the start of the New York City Marathon, I did not see a single person without a cell phone out. Tech was everywhere. One woman burst into tears of frustration when she could not get a cell signal to send a snap of her starting the marathon.
The first time I tried to meditate, I was eight years old. My father would chop wood every day in the winter to feed our continuously burning fire. One day, as the darkness crept up on the evening, I remember staring into the fire when no one was around (I am the second of four children and grew up in a loud, chaotic, intense household where solitude was a commodity), and settling into a state of calm.
You’re walking down an unfamiliar street, visiting a new city, or hiking a new trail you’ve never hiked, and you’re suddenly overwhelmed with the sense that you’ve been there, in that exact spot, having experienced that exact same situation before – despite knowing that you never have.
Then it’s gone as quickly as it came and you carry on, maybe a little puzzled, but no worse for wear.
Is there a word we can use to describe the way the afternoon sun shines through droplets of water as they fall on the garden? The way each bead becomes a tiny gem on its way towards the ground, lit up from inside, complete and beautiful before it hits the grass or the flowers or the leaves and moves on to become something else?
In the beginning, there was Bruegger’s. Prior to Bruegger’s, I have vague recollections of Lucky Charms, eggs, or, on rare occasions, stacks of pancakes. The recollections are vague because I was very young but also because bagels came in like a blitzkrieg and annihilated all other breakfasts in one fell swoop. Once Bruegger’s opened up in West Concord it was all over. The Tzelnics have been a bagel family ever since.
Our days are structured around clocks—from when we get up to when we eat, to when we finally go to sleep. Except for a few confused days after Daylight Saving Time, we take for granted that our way of slicing up the day into seconds and minutes corresponds to a natural (and sometimes moral) truth. But like many unquestioned truths, it’s not really a truth at all.
Hold steady. Burn brightly in a clear and consistent way. This is a time to go inward and focus your attention on what’s really important. What is your flame of truth? Your flame of purpose? Your flame of integrity? You gain clarity right now by being quiet instead of active.
This was number two of in real life encounters after a month of witty banter via the yellow bumble bubbles. We were trying so hard to get to the top of the dating app pile by being both funny and punny.
It’s 1:00 AM and Nicole has been working for the past four hours. A whimper comes from the living room: “Mama?” She prays he’ll fall back asleep, but the cries get louder, the sleep draining from the edges of her son’s voice. As she rolls out of bed, another set of footsteps drag from the small kitchen to the tatami mat on the living room floor that serves as her toddler’s bed. Her husband is still awake; she pulls the covers over her head and hopes for sleep.
Regardless of how much wealth we've amassed, how many material items we possess, or how much education we've acquired, not one of us has been able to stockpile time. Time is a commodity that many of us find ourselves short on.
Yesterday I was kneeling on the floor beside my infant brother, staring into his eyes and trying to make out the shape of my reflection in his pupils. For the first time in my memory, I wondered what it meant to exist. I guess I was weird then, too.
