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?
To comment or respond click on the word comments at the bottom of the page or email me at grace.calvin187 @gmail.com
