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Not that long ago, if someone called you, and there was no answer, there was no problem. Phones were “landlines,” installed in the house and wired to the wall — and if no one was home, the phone kept ringing until the caller gave up. (This is before answering machines — days which people still living today and not hopelessly ancient, remember.) Nobody expected people to stay home, glued 24/7 to the phone, ready to answer whenever it rang.

But now they do. And while cell phones technically free us from sitting by the landline, they chain us to the phone itself.

“Why didn’t you pick up?’ many people ask when we finally do because everyone — your boss, your girlfriend, the kid who mows your lawn — knows that you carry the phone with you closer than the socks on your feet.

I painted Serenity — in which a young woman tranquilly contemplates the Grand Canyon of the U.S. Southwest — with silence in mind. That silence is especially beautiful not because the woman’s phone is turned off, but because she isn’t carrying one at all. She is alone with her thoughts, interrupted by nobody, undisturbed by the vibration of an incoming text.

Technology has its place, but it is not one of master over servants.

(And the answer to the question is, anytime you need to be by yourself with your thoughts.)

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Serenity, by Steve Henderson