Hurry Up Won’t You?
What a beautiful day isn’t it? As people rush around trying to
arrive on time to their destinations, I sit at my desk, coffee cup in hand and
wonder how long it has been since I have read a book that was truly amazing. I
think harder and harder, forcing my memories to push into the farthest and
uttermost darkest recess’s of my mind and yet, the only books that I can think
about, are the ones that I faintly remember reading quite some time ago. Books like “Of Mice and Men”, “Screwtape Letters”
and “White Fang” come to mind, but there are a few modern ones thrown in the
mix that I also recall. Fairly recent books
like “Bringing out the Dead” (this is a great book, later turned into a movie),
and Blood Work, (again, another movie) that were both well written and told an
epic story of struggle and victory. I
caught myself thinking and asking out loud, “What has happened in our world
that the pure joy of reading has now taken a backseat to the social media
frenzy we now see today?”
What I mean by that is simply this; that in most cases, if a
line of script we see is more than half a page long, we usually bypass it in
favor of a much more abbreviated, and shorter “update” that won’t take too much
of our time. Newspapers subscriptions continue to shrink while more and more
people are getting their information from videos and electronic devices. That
raises a question for me, “Are people reading less, or are they merely getting
their reading from other resource other than books and newspapers?”
I credit
the growing inability to remain focused on a single page of writing on the
continuing pressure to “hurry up” in all we do.
We are in a constant “hurry up” mode from the time we awaken to the time
we finally are able to ward off the last distraction and our world can once
again go silent and dark, resting the overworked brains and bodies we have
pushed and pulled on for most of the day.
Hurry up. I don’t know if anybody has noticed this, but
while we are zipping past all the things that once used to hold our attention
and thus created a solid community in our homes and neighborhoods; things like
board games, visiting the neighbors with no agenda, and family TV time ( I
still remember ABC’s TGIF programming), we have lost the ability to enjoy something
so simple as taking a prolonged moment to read, to laugh, or to simply be an
observer of the world around us, rather than a ravenous consumer of our world
that only looks forward to their next meal.
We used to hunger for some R &R, and now we hunger after the “Next
Great Technology.” We burn up our time and energy standing in lines for what
will be outdated in less than a year. We
spend the average equivalent of a Third World’s yearly income purchasing things
we think will make us happy, and have lost the ability to merely sit back and
enjoy that which we have already. Those
that do are considered “boring.”
Today what
I am going to do is this; drink my coffee, enjoy my kids, and be glad that I
have eyes that can enjoy the world around me. I am going to push away the plate
of technology and consumption, and I think I will even turn off my cell phone. I know, it’s boring, but that’s ok… it’s
somehow, simply wonderful!
