50 Years
She’s too young. It’s too soon. Her family is weird. There are a lot reasons J’s family could have rejected me when I became a part of their family 11 years ago, but they didn’t. Maybe they could relate to our situation, because when J’s parents got married they were young too and against all odds chose to jump in with both feet and yet here they are 50 years later celebrating their golden anniversary. In 50 years they’ve lived in 4 states, had 7 children, 10 grandchildren, and 4 great grandchildren and some of those number are still growing.
This past weekend we all gathered to celebrate their love and it was a very special time that I was honored to be a part of. They’ve taught me a lot about what commitment means and I wish them the best in all the years ahead.
We’re Still Breathing
All Grown Up
Reaunion Threads
May I Have Your Attention Please
In our instant, high tech society we are blessed to have so many advancements to help us do everything quicker or without much effort. My challenge though, is to try doing things the slower way every once in a while and resist the temptation to multitask while doing it. It took 2 ½ hours to watch “The Help” at the theater, but for me there was so much more depth by reading the book which took about 10 times the amount of time. Similarly I can get delicious lemonade from the drive thru at Chic Fila, but sometimes J and I like to make it from fresh squeezed lemons. It means I get to use this gorgeous juicer that my sister in law made just for me. I also love the opportunity to get to use this cute little bag that my mom quickly sewed together from scraps of fabric that I had on hand.
She made it for me when I expressed the desire to have something to keep my clothes pins on me while I hang clothes on the line. Most of the time I throw the clothes in the dryer, and believe me I am thankful for a working washer and dryer, but every once in a while I like to get outside and allow our linens a chance to get fresh air and sunlight.The smell of line dried clothing is something I’ve never been able to duplicate from a bottle.
I don’t do these things all the time and I know they are not the most efficient, but they are just little ways for me to slow down, decompress, and find some space from the constant barrage of messages flying at me the rest of the day. For you maybe it’s something else like writing a hand written letter or journal, walking somewhere, or baking from scratch. Throughout this series I hope I have stressed enough that I think all of this change and progress with virtual connection is a good thing. I think that there is a such thing as too much screen time, but what that means might be different for each person. I can only hope that we don’t get so caught up in the digital world that we miss out on all the adventure, romance, pain, fulfillment, and depth that our multi dimensional lives have to offer. That it’s okay to be by yourself and to laugh out loud without anyone even knowing it.
Worse Than TV
Cell Phones, Starbucks, and Google
Our culture seems to be more stressed, rude, and oblivious than ever. iPhone, Blackberry, Starbucks, Google, these are some of the things that come to mind when I think of the staples of our generation. They are the trademarks of our modern society. They may even come across as perpetrators to people like me who long for simpler times and deeper connections. In my quest to find how to cope with the constant changes of our fast paced, high tech world, I discovered the stories of three guys who know a thing or two about the subject.
“Whatever happened to courtesy? What can be so urgent that you have to look down at your phone in the middle of a dinner conversation with people who matter to you? You can’t wait five minutes before staring at your phone?” and in an interview with Bob Green of CNN he says
“You should not be a slave to your telephone. The technology is there to serve you, not the other way around. If the technology is not making your life better — if it is robbing you of experiences in the real world that you would otherwise be enjoying — then you are working for it, when it should be working for you.”
The Line
Fast forward about ten years, to the first day I heard about myspace. It’s the latest thing, You will love it, Everyone’s doing it, is what I was told. I didn’t get it. Why do we need a space? Are people going to be able to reach me through this new fangled website? I reluctantly signed on and my profile picture was a photo of a chicken because that is how I felt about the whole experience, like a big scared chicken. It didn’t take long however to become completely engrossed. Then there was FaceBook, and then there was Twitter, and Tumbler, and Linkden…The truth is when I said hello to my space (or you fill in the blank) I said good bye to my personal space. The person who was shocked about how revealing caller ID was, is now the one who is blogging almost daily to thousands HUNDREDS a bunch of people I don’t even know.My friend Katie said it well in a post that she wrote about Virtual Life vs Real Life“I have to wonder how these devices interrupt our daily living so that we can keep up with our virtual living. Suddenly we can’t enjoy a delicious meal without telling hundreds of people about it instantly. We can’t take a trip somewhere without uploading a million photos as soon as we arrive home. I’ve even read Facebook statuses of women updating while in labor, usually telling 400 of their closest friends about the measurement of their cervix or how lovely the epidural is.”Of course there is a positive element to this additional life that we live online and we all know it. My friend Katie is a prime example. You’ll have to excuse the exposed film in this photo as if the clothing didn’t date it enough. I lived with Katie (shown left) and her family for a while when my parents moved to Texas in the middle of my 8th grade year. I shared a room with her sister/my best friend Melissa (on the right, and I am in the middle). We shared clothes, we laughed and ate chunky monkey while watching pop up videos on VH1. I was there when Katie revealed her tattoo to her mother. We talked about our new boyfriends, we cried about our latest breakups, there was even some skinny dipping somewhere in there. With the girls, at night, acting silly. NOT the boyfriends. We were wild, but not like that.
Then I moved away, and we gradually lost touch. Addresses, last names, and phone numbers changed and I didn’t talk to them for years until myspace came along. Thanks to the connectivity that we have through the internet I know that Melissa has two beautiful girls and Katie has a sweet baby boy. Because of Katie’s blog, Mama the Reader,I know that the people that I affectionately called grandmother and granddaddy are doing well and growing some amazing vegetables, and have goats now!
I wouldn’t have known any of this before social networking and I would be left with our memories, and just hope that they were all doing well. So, I will be the first one to vouch that being connected is not a bad thing, but where do we draw the line? That is what I am currently trying to find out.
Our Virtual Lives
We have built up a culture of distraction in order to keep us from whatever might happen should we not multitask for once. I say “we” because I am a part of it and it’s all very close to home for me. The instagraming, yahoo, blogging me. For example, I despise texting while driving, but every time I hear the little tone on my iphone alerting me that I have a new text or comment the more I automatically feel drawn to pick it up. Several months ago I read a book called Hamlet’s Blackberry which is what inspired me to do this series.
In this book, by William Powers, he looks at the state of a generation entangled in hyperconnectivity and then compares it to that of seven different great philosophers from the past. As each chapter unfolds we find out our situation is not all that unique. For example on page 93 in the chapter about Plato & Socrates we learn “Even writing was once considered a new technology and just like many other new things it wasn’t as obvious of a step forward as we see it today. Socrates writes of the king’s view of this tool by saying that ‘writing is a dangerous invention, because it doesn’t allow ideas to flow freely and change in real time, the way they do in the mind during oral exchange. Whereas conversation is all about back-and-forth, written language is a one way street: Once a thought is written down, it’s frozen and you can’t challenge it or change it’s position. It’s a record of ideas that already exist, rather than a way of creating new ones.’ Thinkers have been analyzing and debating this passage for ages, because Socrates got it so wrong. His reaction to writing is typical of the confusion and anxiety new technologies often cause.” Along with this excerpt from the book I scribbled loads of other quotes on scraps of paper that are now scattered about through drawers and old notebooks. This was my way of trying to cram every thought provoking point from the book into my head, primarily so that I could relay it to you. I highly recommend checking out Hamlet’s Blackberry and I hope you will join me by sharing your own opinions and stories this week as I talk about the high tech, over stimulated, plugged in generation that we are all a part it and whether or not the perceived problem is in fact a problem.