Steal My Phone

A 3-Step Cure for Our Social Dilemma

After watching the just-released Netflix documentary, Social Dilemma, I felt violated, bamboozled…then grateful that my purse had been stolen 5 years before, forcing me to live without my cell phone for 30 days.

As a middle-aged white therapist from Los Angeles, leader of a youth empowerment group, I’d just arrived in a Colombian bus depot, on a service trip with young people from the US, learning first-hand the value of sustainability and giving back to those less fortunate. Our ten-person team was excited to be surrounded by the shining faces, delicious coffee, and colorful lifestyle of our South American brothers and sisters.

Like cavemen with torches, encircling a fire, we huddled around our travel bags, awaiting a bus to take us to a farm outside of the city. Removing my cripplingly heavy purse, I placed it like the cherry on top of a tall luggage cake, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I whipped my blonde ponytailed head to the left to see a well-dressed woman asking me for directions. Apologizing for not knowing, I flipped my head back around to see, feel and know the absence of my purse. In the seconds my eyes had been distracted, the lovely woman’s clever cohort must’ve swiped it right from under the watchful eye of my husband and group.