The wisdom of the elders is being overtaken by the consumerism and busyness of the day. We live in a more frenetic world than we ever have since the advent of the technological world. The promise of simplifying our lives has resulted in hours of frustration when the systems go down, are overloaded, or give such stringent parameters in which to operate that it boggles the mind how this has simplified our world.
Simply talking to someone who is a stranger is beyond the scope of those who were born with a phone in their hand.
Even managers have had to redesign their meetings and directions to these younger adults because they often can’t communicate verbally in meetings or even do simple math without a calculator.
So where has all this technology helped?
With communication and disabilities. It has helped the thousands of non-verbal individuals be able to communicate and, for the first time, be able to be heard and understood. It has helped the blind to see and the deaf to read what people are saying in videos. Those who have lost limbs or never had them are able to function more normally with technologically controlled, robotic limbs.
Assisting those who need to have physical or visual reminders for time management difficulties are able to keep themselves on task and on time. Helping those with discalcula and other mathematical limitations create spreadsheets and programs to decode the mysteries of the mathematical world.
For those with disabilities, the technological advances have open up the horizons of a whole new world once inaccessible to them.
But what about the rest of us?
Technology is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it is a powerful tool.
But on the other, it generates a laziness of an unused mental capacity. Not long ago, we had to memorize not only our street address, but those of our relatives for sending, say, birthday cards and presents. Telephone numbers were jotted down on paper in address books kept in a drawer by the phone – the most important ones were memorized.
If a person needed to research something, they knew how to get around the card deck in the library card catalog system, and knew how to locate the physical books on the appropriate shelf. They knew how to spell without spellchecker, and read without digital translators. And finding things alphabetically was a key to finding words, books, and names without difficulty in long lists or filing systems.
Sewing, cooking, drawing were once done by hand – skills lost today except by the few who try to teach it in videos to the disinterested online.
Do you know what your phone number is? What the phone numbers of your relatives are? How about finding the number for your plumber without looking it up online?
The result of our dependence on these advances is this…we’ve lost track of our lives. We live in a world indoors with all our comforts and conveniences, distractions and late night work hours without the ability to slow down.
I went to a convent once 20 years ago for a retreat. One of the first things the nun told me when I was being shown to my room was that it took three days before the ladies who came could even unwind.
Three days.
It has take me three years since I left the corporate clatter before I could find myself. And I’m still working on it.
But one necessity for life that has been lost in all of this noise is something I recently discovered.
Learning to live in the moment is the only time we have to touch the eternal now.
Something the wisdom of our elders already knew.
Isn’t it time to slow down? Can we turn our attention to the quiet solitude of an unhurried life?
If we don’t, we are racing toward our grave without stopping to enjoy the sweet scent of the roses along the way.
And is that the kind of life that’s really worth living?