When Did Being Reachable Become the Same Thing as Being Available?

We all know that person whose phone is always on Do Not Disturb.

The person who doesn’t return texts for hours. Days. Sometimes weeks.

I am her.

She is me.

I learned to know when to say no.

And, more importantly, I’ve learned that sometimes saying no isn’t about whether you can do something.

It’s about what doing it will cost you.

Because you can answer the phone.

You can respond to the text.

You can give somebody a ride.

You can loan the money.

You can solve another problem.

You can rearrange your schedule.

You can show up one more time.

And sometimes, because we technically can, we convince ourselves that means we should.

It doesn’t.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

There have been times in my life when I’ve made myself so available to other people that I stretched myself damn near to my breaking point. I’ve rearranged my own life trying to make someone else’s easier. I’ve given time I didn’t really have, energy I couldn’t afford to lose, and resources I eventually needed for myself.

And here’s the thing about availability:

It can become an expectation remarkably quickly.

The first time you do something, it’s a favor.

Do it enough times and it becomes something you normally do.

Keep doing it and, eventually, some people will start treating your availability like something they’re entitled to.

Then something strange happens when you finally say no.

It can feel to the other person like you’ve taken something away from them.

But you didn’t.

It was yours to give in the first place.

Maybe that’s why I’ve started thinking differently about the little device most of us carry around all day.

There was a time when someone could call your house and you simply weren’t home.

That was the explanation.

Nobody knew whether you were at the grocery store, taking a nap, talking to somebody else, sitting on the porch, or staring at the ceiling doing absolutely nothing.

You weren’t available.

Then answering machines let people leave messages.

Cell phones made us reachable outside the house.

Texting made it possible to contact someone without having a conversation.

Then came read receipts.

Online statuses.

Social media.

Now someone can send you a text, notice that you’ve read it, see you post something on Facebook twenty minutes later, and wonder why you haven’t responded.

“I know you saw my message.”

Okay.

And?

Somewhere along the way, technology giving people the ability to reach us started creating the expectation that we should make ourselves available to them.

But those aren’t the same thing.

Reachable means you have a way to contact me.

Available means I have the time, energy, attention, capacity (or simply the desire) to engage with you right now.

Technology can determine the first.

It doesn’t get to decide the second.

And phones aren’t the only place this has happened.

Work followed us home too.

Email used to live at work.

Now it’s in your pocket.

Your coworkers are in your pocket.

Your boss can be in your pocket.

The physical boundaries that once told the world this person is no longer at work have slowly disappeared.

We didn’t necessarily become more available.

We just became easier to reach.

So now the boundary has to come from us.

And that’s harder.

Because setting a boundary yourself requires being willing to let someone misunderstand it.

It requires being okay with someone thinking you could have answered.

Because sometimes they’re right.

You could have.

You chose not to.

And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.

At the same time, I don’t subscribe to the version of “protecting your peace” where we pretend relationships require absolutely nothing from us.

People matter.

Relationships come with responsibilities.

If someone I love genuinely needs me, that matters.

If people depend on me, that matters.

If I routinely ignore someone for days but expect them to answer immediately whenever I need something, I don’t get to call that a boundary.

That’s just a one-sided relationship with better branding.

There is a difference between protecting your time and treating other people’s time like it doesn’t matter.

But I think there is also a difference between caring about people and granting them unlimited access to you.

And maybe that’s the distinction we’ve lost.

Access is something we give.

A smartphone doesn’t give everyone who has our number (or social medial handle) a claim to our attention.

A notification isn’t a summons.

A read receipt isn’t a contract.

And being capable of doing something for someone doesn’t automatically create an obligation to do it.

I’m learning to be much more intentional about who and what gets my availability because I’ve learned something else:

Being available has a cost.

Sometimes the cost is five minutes.

Sometimes it’s money.

Sometimes it’s energy.

Sometimes it’s an afternoon.

Sometimes it’s your peace.

And sometimes you don’t understand how expensive your availability has become until you’ve given away so much of yourself that there isn’t enough left for your own life.

So yes.

My phone will probably be on Do Not Disturb.

I might answer your text in three hours.

It might be tomorrow.

Depending on the text…we may circle back next Thursday (shrug).

It doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t care.

Sometimes it simply means I’ve finally learned that being reachable and being available are two very different things.

And I’m allowed to decide when I’m each.

Something to think about:

When your phone makes you reachable 24 hours a day, who gets to decide how much of that time you’re actually available…? And how?