I had a couple of conversations today that put me in a thoughtful headspace -- challenging when I had to keep shaking myself back into the present to help customers; my headspace twines around my consciousness like the forest of A Midsummer Night's Dream, pulling me in, enchanting, unwinding in little eddying paths that break off here and there, going nowhere in particular, beckoning me deeper. A fine place to exist in my mind, jungly and beautiful, but, unfortunately, instead of looking quiet and serene, I probably look a bit mannequinesque, a girl with her mind gone, gazing vacantly at nothing.
Oh well. Today's thoughtful headspace centered around busyness. The first conversation came about as I helped an older gentleman (courtly this time, instead of creepy) place an order for a book we didn't have in stock. As I scribbled the titles down and proceeded to tap on the keyboard at lightning speed, he said, "I can tell your age just by your writing and your typing."
I grinned at him. "Terrible handwriting, fast typing?"
"No," he said; "everything's fast. You write fast and you type fast. It's the mark of your generation."
As I smiled, pleased with myself -- I was typing beautifully -- he added, "I feel sorry for your generation, to be honest."
Oh. "Yeah," I said. "Me too."
I knew where he was going, but I forget that other people aren't as quick to pick up on my knowing, so he paused, just long enough for me to have asked, "Why?" and continued, "You don't know how to slow down. You have all this technology you know how to use, and it makes you work even harder. I have three grownup children, and they work all day, come home to fifty more emails they can't get away from, get text messages from their bosses at eleven o'clock at night -- it's breakneck. You can never escape."
I agreed. "Yeah...I used to work in a law office. Back in the day, you mailed something out and it took at least a week to get back. Now? With email and faxing, it's all instantaneous and you wind up doing three times as much work because you don't get to delay anything."
As he talked, elaborating on how things used to be, I felt wistful, perhaps a little sad. It's not like we can trade it off -- if it weren't for technology, I wouldn't be able to keep in as frequent contact with my dearest, who are not, for the most part, my nearest. I have people of whom I'm especially fond whom I would never have met were it not for all this newfangled technology crap. My life would have decided holes without the internet, the cell phone.
And yet sometimes I wonder if it's killing us, to be instantaneously connected, at all times, to so many forms of communication, so many avenues for information. With just my cell phone, I can call people, email, text message, take pictures, record short videos (really crappy ones, but nonetheless), blog, surf the internet, even text* while I'm talking. I mean, Geez. And turning your cell phone off? Taboo. On the one hand, as isolated as our lives tend to be, that kind of connection relieves most boredom, loneliness, and mildly frustrating trivia questions. On the other hand, we know how neither to relax nor to wait, and there's no excuse for taking it easy when it comes to one's job. For anything. As a result, we carry a lot of stress and don't know where to put it or how to channel it.
So I was feeling a little bleak about our generation -- talk about a Catch-22; I wouldn't sacrifice my close long-distance connections for anything, but I have always hated getting work calls while on vacation, and really, thanks to this "easy" instant information trading, we cram three times as much work into our weekly forty+ hours as our grandparents did -- and wanting to sneak away from modern society altogether, maybe find some faraway island to found a new commune (anyone?) to drive the softness out of my muscles and the franticness out of my sinews, when the other conversation came up.
This one, with a touch of delicious irony, took place utilizing instant communication. Phil and I were trading Ben Franklin quotes (one of these days I'll post pictures I took of this Ben Franklin statue my grandmother gave me -- it's totally creepy and I don't know why I love it so much) and disliking in particular the, as he put it, pithy aphorism, "Do you have something to do tomorrow? Do it today," and I observed, thinking of my earlier conversation, that without today's technology, the pithy and virtuous had less to do (my text message was less witty), and he said he'd love more time to putter and invent.
And isn't that, really, the dream? It's not just about slowing down in general and having less demanding jobs, though that is certainly part of the post-postmodern yearning; it's about going beyond earning a living -- about the freedom really to live. In my ideal life, the one based on pure fantasy, the one I have with a great big MAYBE LATER stamped across it (like PAROLE GRANTED or DISCARDED), I don't even have a job. Given my pure druthers, in a world without violence or the need for money, I'd be a hobo. Maybe a Johnny Appleseed-type character, scattering seeds, walking barefoot with a pack slung over my shoulder and a cooking pot on my head. (Well, probably not on my head. In my ideal life, I'm a hobo who maintains a ragged sort of attractiveness.) Then, of course, I'd hobo across a bunch of countries, learn every language known to man, put it all into many beautifully written books, and relax periodically in my airy and light-filled "home base," reading books by other people and cooking food no one's ever heard of.
In reality, I've never even taken a real vacation.
This isn't me putting myself into a state of despondency or wallowing in self-pity; a girl does what she must, and I'm quite happy with my life so far. Things are good, I've grown and I'm growing, I'm going places I would never have dreamed when I was a child. As for the rest, there's always later. But at what point does later become never? If I follow all of the edicts of modern society, I'll only have enough money to do what I want to do when I'm too old to do it. What, am I going to take to the open highway barefoot with my walker? Throw my cooking pot in the basket of my mechanized wheelchair? Gah.
I don't know. I look around at everyone frantically spending money on elaborate Christmas presents for their family members in a time of economic crisis (okay, eighty percent of this is sour grapes for being able to get my family next to nothing this year), and I wonder about the meaning of it. We buy each other books we'll be too busy to read, movies we'll be too busy to watch, music we'll be to busy to listen to, board games we'll be too busy to play. It's like everyone is stockpiling their MAYBE LATERs a little bit at a time, like all of these little tidbits are part of a kind of hope chest we pass on to others, wishing they'll have a chance to relax someday and live the good life at a slower pace with a little less pressure.
There's really no answer; this is pretty fruitless speculation. Good with the bad and all that. I plan to work a little harder at squirreling away a penny here and there, building up a small hoard of living money so that maybe one of these days I can see the many places I've never seen, tailor my hobo dream a little bit to reality. In the meantime, I have my family, and, thanks to technology, my Especially Fonds, who, in using modern technology, help me remember the richness of the meaning of life, which is love, which is God.
_______________
*I know, I know, it's not a verb. But I defer to my favorite anarchist and his philosopher tiger friend: It got verbed. With all the ways in which the growth of the English language is slowing down even faster than our birth rate, I'll take what shifts and changes I can get.
5 comments:
The access to instant connection.... it is both a blessing and a curse to me. When I am feeling lonely and isolated in my apartment late at night, I can at least surf the net, send a few e-mails, and feel less alone. And yet, how often do I turn to my computer when what I really need is to get on my knees and pray? More often than I'd care to admit.
It's difficult for me to picture my life without technology because it seems that it's always been there. My dad works in computers, so we had them in our house from the time I was a child, even when our economic status might have otherwise prevented that access. And I first signed on the internet at 12, my dad watching over my shoulder and I checked out chat rooms and online chess. I have had brief stretches of technology silence, and honestly, it's been blissful.... once I get over the initial panic that I'm missing some important e-mail. I've found that when I am separated from tv, internet, and even phone that I talk to others more, spend more time reading and playing cards, simple things. It's nice. But I haven't gone longer than a week without checking e-mail since... maybe 1999. I don't know how I feel about that.
One thing I miss in our technology age: handwritten letters. I really enjoy the occasional card or postcard that I receive from friends, but you rarely get a letter anymore. What's the point of writing a letter about events in your life when you're going to IM that person in 5 minutes anyway? It makes me sad though. And do people even write love letters anymore? I sure hope so.
Handwritten letters are wonderful.
I kept in touch with a friend of mine for years using nothing but handwritten letters -- from the summer I was fifteen till I graduated from college. (It's hard to remember when we got our first computer -- we weren't as fortunate in our technological advancement as you, SG, so I believe, when the letters started, I had no internet availability.) Even when email came into its full force, we continued to handwrite our letters.
There's something about that -- something about having a reason to anticipate the mail, instead of groaning to sort through junk and bills. (My sister calls it the Disappointment Box -- but she still handwrites letters and cards. We're very old-fashioned, she and I, in completely different ways.) Also something powerful in seeing a person's individuality expressed through his or her handwriting, and something vulnerable in committing, and reading, crossed-out lines from spelling errors or changes of mind in word choice. Handwritten letters are less edited, more real. (This goes very much for me -- I overedit everything.)
But at the same time, the delay between sending and receiving would be a little hard to bear, and, like you said, we'd hear from or speak to most of the people to whom we'd write long before they received what we had written.
I must admit that, although I fall into something of the internet junkie category myself, not having direct access in my living quarters the past year+ has given me a lot of freedom. As I'm grappling with, and learning how to manage, the devilfish (my depression -- I've decided on a name for it, in the hopes that, Hebrew-like, my naming it will assert some authority over it), I'm slowly becoming more able to do more with the extra time besides watch endless TV. I confess that I do check my email with my phone when I'm not at my parents' house; but other than that, it's a rather peaceful means of existence, and I'm working on better, wiser, fuller uses of my time.
Have you read L. M. Montgomery's Across the Miles? A compilation of short stories hinging on letters, it presents a delightful picture of the joys -- and tragedies -- that stem from those handwritten missives of days gone by. (Note: Never pour your heart out to someone in a letter and then say, "If you feel in kind, write back; if you don't, don't respond at all, and I'll know your answer for no." The letter is bound to be lost in the most absurd fashion before its object ever receives it, and both your lives will be empty and bitter with mutually unrequited whatever.)
One of those stories, while totally obvious, is so beautiful and romantic -- about a lonely girl, just bereft of her domineering father and only living relative who bequeated upon her the remnants of an ancient family feud, who begins receiving anonymous letters that pull her through her grief and awaken her to life and learning and politics, which she was never allowed to enjoy -- that it definitely makes up for its obviousness. Lovely book. (Crap. I've made myself want to read it, and it's boxed up somewhere in my parents' garage.)
Curses. I meant "bequeathed," but of course the comments have no editing function.
No, I haven't read Across the Miles, but I love L. M. Montgomery, so I'll look it up. Thanks for the suggestion!
Also, the only thing that makes me swoon more than good manners is getting a letter from a boy. A person who shall not be named (guess) writes handwritten thank you cards whenever I host parties.
I think I was born in the wrong century. Well, except for that whole wanting to have a career thing.
Wow. He really is the devil. I totally sympathize with the whole wrong century thing; sometimes I wonder why these things which are so clear to us are so obscure to a lot of other people. Guess that's part of the mission though, right? Oh, and last night while digging through boxes of ornaments I found a few old letters I'd saved. It was funny and lovely and warm and glowy.
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