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Your Brain Is Addicted to Digital Noise — Here’s How to Break Free
Why nature’s quiet indifference gives us everything we need
I didn’t just lose my phone that day in Nusa Penida — I lost an appendage. At least, that’s what it felt like. One moment, it was in my pocket (because, like an idiot, I was wearing linen pants with the loosest pockets known to man), and the next, it was gone. And when I finally realized this, sitting in a café, I did what any rational adult would do: I had a full-blown panic attack, hyperventilating like I’d just misplaced a kidney.
I returned to my hostel, deflated and defeated. But the kindness of the Balinese should never be understated. Kiting, the hostel assistant and local guide, immediately offered to help. The rest of the day became a full-scale phone chase across Nusa Penida: there I was, on the back of Kiting’s motorcycle, my iPad clutched in my hands like a divining rod as Apple’s Find My Phone feature pinged away.
After discovering a driver had picked it up, it became a desperate race against time — literally tracking a moving target, weaving through broken roads, bouncing over valleys, racing from one tourist spot to another, even stopping random drivers to ask if they were the guy.
