"Here's one of those imagination games that I find so much fun. The exercise this week is to decide what era in history you would choose to live in if you couldn't live now. Not just when, but why? While you're at it, how about where? What do you imagine life would be like?"
I have currently been re-reading the Trixie Belden Mysteries from my childhood and these books were written in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Oh, to go back to that simple care-free time!
I miss the simpler days before Internet and the world wide web, before cell phones and text messaging, before video games and DVRs (well, maybe not the DVR, because I love my DVR). Today's society has become a hurry up society, a throw away society and an instant gratification society. Whatever happened to "good things come to those who wait?"
Don't get me wrong, the Internet is a wonderful way to keep informed, to educate yourself on certain issues and a way to communicate with those far away, but my god! We spend so much time in front of the computer screen! No more family meals with face-to-face conversations, no more reading the newspaper as a family activity, no more personal interactions with loved ones - everyone is glued to their own 15 inch section of the world.
Personally, I hate cell phones - of course, I hate landlines as well, but because I live in a rural area, a land line is an essential. I hate walking into the grocery store or discount store and seeing customers with the phone stuck to their ears - or worse yet, those ear thingys that make them look like they are talking to themselves! And people with cell phones have lost all sense of personal space. When I'm in a theater watching a movie I've paid $10 to see, I don't want to hear about someone's hateful boyfriend or conniving best friend while the person in front of me yaks into her phone at the top of her voice.
I miss the simplier times when families worked together to make their homes sancutaries. Or when families did activities as a group. Or when families read aloud to each other instead of watching the TV. I feel like my family is moving backwards in time, because I'm trying to do more things the way we used to. We have quit eating out in restaurants (my birthday, August 6th, was the last time) and we are cooking more as a family. I am also canning and preserving more food from my backyard garden. We use the DVR to record programs we want to watch instead of aimlessly watching what happens to be on the boob tube. We are reading together and talking together, and even though we all still have a few computer hours each week, we are no longer glued to the computer screen during family times.
I may be old fashioned, and many people may not agree with me, but with our country and economy in the shape it is in, I think we are all going to have to re-think the way we live our lives. Spending will have to decrease and I want to continue moving my family back to a more relaxed atmosphere instead of the hurry-hurry, me-me, throw away society we have become.
Photo courtesy of American Feast.
3 comments:
I hear you loud and clear. Things must change. Great post.
I'm with you on just about everything you said. Excellent post.
I have cousins who are raising close-knit families with activities like you describe. My mate and I make a concerted effort to have time together away from the screen and while I no longer cook, my youngest daughter and I go out twice a month to have a relaxed meal and talk with no hurry, no schedule to rush off somewhere. And I really hate cell phones, too.
Good post.
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