In an essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled “My Life as a Cellphone Holdout ” Gary Sernovitz a 40-year-old investment banker and novelist describes his experience of living without a cell phone for the last 20 years (although he’ll be getting one in just a few weeks due to changing work conditions). He cites the statistic that 21 million Americans adults don’t own one either a figure I found both surprising and heartening — perhaps there’s hope for this country after all.

But learning there are that many disconnected fellow citizens was also a bit deflating for me. Here I’d thought I was doing quite well thank you for firmly insisting on holding on to my old-fashioned cell phone which I suppose some people would call a nonsmartphone. I hear these terms bandied about — smartphone iPhone Android what have you — although I don’t know what they mean nor do I particularly want to know. Smart Jews yes that interests me; smartphones not really especially since the smartest Jews I know have never even heard of smartphones.

I’d never even consider getting one of those hip holsters for my phone; it’s much too dignifying of the gadget makes it too much a permanent part of me. Better to keep it at bay to treat it as the pet digital pit bull it is as if on a leash. And so it lies in my shirt pocket where the fact that it’s on perpetual “vibrate” mode makes the chances only about 50-50 that I’ll feel it buzzing in time to answer a call. At least this way I can honestly say my phone has made me more “sensitive.”

True when cell phones were first becoming ubiquitous years ago I had resolved to limit the ways in which I’d use it so as to protect myself from becoming enslaved to it and from having my sense of privacy and humanity worn down by it. But some of those limits — like not speaking on it while walking in public instead going off to the side to answer a call on the street or not sending messages — went by the wayside pretty quickly.

I had also decided not to utilize the message-sending function but that too is a thing of the past. Still I’ve tried to put personal rules in place: I only respond to messages that I receive but don’t initiate them and even then there has to be a good reason for me not to actually call the person back instead of sending a message; and I write back using fully formed sentences punctuation and all. Weird I know but effective for my purposes. Better weird than wired you might say.

In any event along come Gary Sernovitz and 21 million other Americans to let me know that one can dispense with these gizmos entirely and still live to tell the tale. Mr. Sernovitz writes:

For the last two decades I have spent 83% of my waking hours enjoying the freedom of not owning a cellphone 5% feeling smug about it 2% in situations in which a phone would have been awfully convenient and 10% fielding incredulous questions. The first is always: How do you do your job?...I explain that my colleagues are very tolerant the firm provides me with all of the latest communication tools (computer telephone Post-its) right at my desk and accomplishing my daily tasks without a smartphone is not beyond human capability. Indeed people lived this way back at the Dawn of Civilization circa 1992….

Should I find myself on the street suddenly needing to make a callManhattanstill has over 5400 payphones at least 30 of which still work. I also don't pretend that cellphones don't exist. I have borrowed them in emergencies — usually from my wife a few times from strangers while mumbling that mine is "in the shop."

While there’s more than ample inspiration in Torah to disconnect in this way his came from Henry David Thoreau the 19th century American writer and philosopher whose Walden details his leaving society behind for two years to live in solitary contemplation of nature and life at Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Sernovitz continues:

Thoreau's words … seemed like the key to unlock reservoirs of willpower to cope with the overwhelming technological distractions of a world even more distracting than his was 150 years ago. And so the decision not to own a cellphone was always easy for me. Thoreau wouldn't have had one…. Neither would I. End of story. While many believe technology has made us kinder smarter and more connected Thoreau wouldn't think so. Our inventions "are but improved means to an unimproved end….” His road to the improved end was straightforward …"Simplicity simplicity simplicity!"

This last point is an important one. Society today is preoccupied with discovering and implementing ever faster more efficient cheaper easier means to live life. But lost in the mad rush to create and use these “improved means” of living is any consideration of what the point of life is. And without ever stopping to think about that and begin to live with life’s true purpose in mind one is left with only the “unimproved” — indeed animalistic — end of “eat and drink for tomorrow we die.”

Speaking of death Sernovitz quotes what he says are Thoreau’s most famous words: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what I had to teach and not when I came to die discover that I had not lived.”

The way Chazal put it is “One who wants to live should die before he dies.” It’s the ultimate paradox: If when it comes time to leave this world one doesn’t want to painfully discover that all this time he actually “had not lived ” there’s only one thing to do: throughout life put oneself to death. That is to say put the ego and bodily drives to death by taming and tempering them be meimis oneself in the tents of Torah through toil-filled learning and disconnect from so-called life-enhancing technology. All those forms of “death” make possible both successful life in this world and the next eternal one.

Mr. Sernovitz concludes:

But in a few weeks I will buy a phone. I am scared. I am afraid of losing a small part of my identity goodbye to No-PhoneGary…. I'm afraid of becoming rude of placing my phone faceup on a restaurant table…. What I'm most afraid of though is becoming a tool of my tool of having one less weapon in the never-ending battle to protect … the territory of my consciousness. I have intentions to be a different kind of smartphone user. I'll use it only when I travel. At home I'll stow it far away from me in a terrarium with a snake. I'll never text.

To which I say all I can say is: Good luck with thatGary.