These days, I pick up my phone and just look at it. Not to scroll, not to call, not even to check the time. Just to look.
Almost like I expect something to happen. Something to materialize. Something to save me from myself.
It feels like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat. How the fuck did he do that, right? And yet, here I am, staring at this slab of glass and metal, waiting for it to conjure something.
Too many of us are doing the same.
The Old Altars
There was a time when people sought connection somewhere else; connecting with the divine through nature, art, and love.
If you needed hope, or strength, or answers, you didn’t reach for a device, you reached for the sky, or for a canvas, or for the arms of someone who mattered. You walked into a forest, or a museum, or a kitchen filled with family. You searched in places that made you feel part of something bigger, something alive, something that couldn’t be compressed into pixels.
Now? We refresh. We swipe. We type our confessions into search bars and pray the algorithm shows mercy.
The New Rituals
We look to our phones for salvation.
For forgiveness.
For solutions.
For love.
For work.
For someone — anyone — to say, you’re not alone in this.
We shop. We doomscroll. We ask Google questions we’d never dare ask a priest, a doctor, or even a friend.
Every app is a god.
Every notification a prayer bead.
Every charging cord a candle.
If and when we pray, we don’t kneel anymore; we hunch.
What We’re Really Worshipping
So here’s the question: if the phone is the new altar, what exactly are we worshipping?
Is it connection — or is it control?
Is it opportunity — or is it surveillance dressed up as convenience?
Is it love, or just a steady drip-feed of validation to keep us from falling apart?
Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
The divine was never meant to be locked behind glass. It’s in the salt of the sea on your lips, the smell of rain hitting dry earth, the warmth of another hand in yours. It’s in music that vibrates through your bones, in the way a horizon can stop you in your tracks, in laughter so unrestrained it feels like flight.
That’s connection. That’s transcendence.
We’ve handed our offerings over to the machine, and the machine doesn’t promise salvation. It promises engagement.
That’s not connection. That’s business.
The Reckoning
So I go back to that moment: me, holding my phone, staring at it, waiting for something to transpire.
And I have to ask myself: what am I really hoping for?
A message from someone I love? A miracle opportunity? A dopamine hit dressed up as “breaking news”?
Because if this is where we place our longing, and our hunger now — in pixels, in push notifications, in likes and DMs, then we should ask ourselves, what do we actually need to be looking for?
Not another scroll. Not another distraction. Not another cheap illusion.
But something that breaks through the noise. Something that isn’t for sale. Something that actually connects us back, to each other, to reality, to ourselves.
Because until we ask that question, we’ll keep bowing to the altar of the screen, waiting for a miracle that was never designed to come.
Words Have Power 