Thursday, June 20, 2013

How About Some Heat…It's Getting Cold In This Piece


Facebook is an amazing communications vehicle and without it we would be hard pressed to contact our friends and relatives that we “ain’t heard from in years.” It
goes without saying that I-Pod, I-Pad, smart phones and other devices offer apps and opportunities that allow us interact with others in a multi faceted number of ways. However, my concern is that these socially oriented activities might be taking up too much of our time, and actually depriving us of well-intended, altruistic-minded  interaction.

I was in the airport the other day and took advantage of an opportunity to check out the surroundings, just to see what’s going on with the other people that we’re sharing this planet with.  Well, let me tell you. Out of the fifty or so people I visually surveyed, one adult was verbally reprimanding a child, and two others were conversing with one another. In the meantime, every other person was either LAPTOP ing, I-PAD ing, I-POD ing, or I-PHONE ing in a solitary, and seemingly “don’t mess with me” manner. Whether they were game playing, e-mailing, texting, or on the web; just about everybody present was virtually connected to some kind of electronic doohickey, and that to me was not cool.

My concern is if we will ever stop allowing technology to usurp our time, and then dictate to us what we’re going to do with it. We listen to our I-pods while ignoring the presence of others, and we text upcoming social events and our so-called personal business while at the dinner table. We Facebook happy birthdays, and we use Linked In to announce our career advancements. When, if ever, are we going to communicate in a more personal manner, and is it possible that we might even start actually talking to each other again?

When my procrastination was at its apex, my grandmother gave me a plaque that sarcastically read…”Tomorrow I’m going to get my shit together.”  Well, no one of us is promised tomorrow ya’ll, so let’s start right now and holla at each other a little more warmly. Write a letter sometime like my good friend Jean Ann who does about thirty a year. Call somebody every now and then instead of texting, and find out if you still recognize each other’s voice. Make personal contact with your family and close friends to let them know what significant changes have occurred in your life, before they hear it from somebody else who saw it on Facebook. As my mother inferred in one of her poems:

These actions give opportunity to plant a seed
A seed that will show someone we care
Then they too can plant a seed somewhere.

I know we can bless one another and be blessed ourselves if every now and again we show love through our actions, rather than sending or posting our feelings on a heartless gadget. The time to bust a move is now ya’ll, how bout it?



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