Perspective In a Busy World!

Time out for some perspective. It's easy to get into a sort of morbid downer place with all the crazy stuff that has been going on in the country the past several years. More and more the pattern looks like "1984" with controlled speech (Political Correctness), the forever war, what are we up to now? four? Maybe more coming ... Then there's also the whole social agenda and new speak that calls sex love, homosexual unions marriage, federal money giveaways are called tax rebates even though the person being rebated to hasn't actually paid any taxes. We're lied to about every little thing in sight as if it's a crisis and because most people seem to remember so little they don't realize what a huge change this has all been.

But let's at least flip over to the good side. Do you want to know what is going on? Well there has never been a time when you could get so much information (good, bad, ugly, well founded, wrong, right ... every which way) so quickly. I remember back around 1965 when I attended a talk about the coming information age and it wasn't nearly as extensive as the reality has proved to be. Dynabook, a concept that Alan Kay popularized around 1968 is just about here. Now there's an example of a vision that has driven a whole industry in part. The iPad and the various tablet computers are starting to look a lot like Dynabook. So technology has certainly been a positive force, an exciting force in advancing our capabilities.

Our ability to move from place to place has been enhanced from when I was a boy. The interstate highway system and the development of passenger jet aircraft has made it a lot easier. I do miss streetcars though. I went to high school every day on one of Washington D.C.'s streetcars and I don't think the metro or the bus system really is all that much of an improvement.

Books! I'm a book maven and now we can download books to e-readers like Kindles and Nooks, etc. and that's quite exciting for moving information around. We lost some things however. Life is way too organized now and that means it's being lived on a program and that's maybe not all that good. You need to live at your own pace and to your own drummer at least some of the time. Organized sports for kids seems to me to take some of the fun out of the whole thing. It makes it way too much about adults and not nearly enough about just having fun. When I was a kid there wasn't nearly as much organized sports for kids and we all would play games that we made up or we'd have pickup ball games where we'd choose sides and just play at a park.

Just a few things to think about. You can never go backwards and every change likely supplants something. It has good points and bad points and often maybe no points at all. We live too fast these days. There needs to be more time to just kick back and contemplate and appreciate. I think appreciating is really important. It doesn't matter what you appreciate so long as it is something you find meaningful. There is a world of mystery in a dew drop. But to notice it you have to slow down and look. You have to make time for wonder and beauty, and nowadays that's hard. So work at it!