The other morning I had a dream. My wife and I were out walking our dog when we saw a family playing together in their front yard. I’m not sure if we knew these people or not, but we decided to sit down on the side of the sidewalk (which was at the top of their lot, dropping quickly down toward their house).

Suddenly one of their children came running up to us and told us their parents wanted us to come hide with them quickly, because something bad was going to happen. This being a dream we quickly complied, and we ended up hiding in one of their storage rooms–and suddenly it was dark outside. We could see police lights flashing outside, and there was some sort of commotion, including gunshots.

I decided to see what was happening and crept over to the window to peek out. I could see a man just out side the window, and I think he was armed. I ducked back down again, afraid he might have seen me. At that point I woke up, and I lay in bed contemplating the dream in one of those half-asleep states where thought is conscious, but not entirely rational. My biggest concern about the dream was that we hadn’t taken a cellphone with us, and we had no way of calling our boys to tell them not to come looking for us and put themselves in danger.

My wife and I have a love-hate affair with technology. I work in IT, but I’m not a gadget guy like so many of my peers. My wife is Finnish, but in spite of her people practically inventing the cellphone, she doesn’t like using them, especially since they became portable time-wasters. So unlike most people, we look for opportunities to leave our gadgets behind. We don’t want to be connected 24/7/365. People have become too dependent on instant communication, and assume everyone should respond immediately to everything and anyone. They can do without us for half an hour.

And yet as the dream pointed out, there are times when communication is critical. We have had several dogs during our marriage, all of them rescues, and all of them older. My wife usually walks them in the morning while I’m getting ready for work, and there have been several times through the years when something has happened and, for various reasons, it becomes questionable if the dog will make it back home.

As a result we’ve many times discussed the necessity of taking a cell phone with her so she can call me for help. We agree it would be a good idea, but she never does.

Similarly, one several occasions we’ve been out walking and encountered a stray. Many times they have collars with a phone number. It would be handy if we had our phones to just call the owners then and there and spare them and us some worry. But we never do.

And there are Saturdays when I spend most of the day outside working on this or that. Sometimes I keep my phone with me, which comes in handy when my wife wants to call me to lunch. Other times I leave it in the house all day and find hours later that someone needed to contact me.

As much as I hate to say it, we would probably be much more self-reliant if we carried those darn phones with us. But the argument could also be made that not having to have them with us is also showing our self-reliance. Are we just being digital hermits, or is it sometimes a good thing to not have the world always a text away? Life is full of such dilemmas.