I’ve been reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. Simply reading about his life is exhausting. By all accounts, Roosevelt was a vivacious, energetic and robust character. He lived more in his first thirty years than two of any lesser mortals manages to pack into a lifetime. By his third decade he had graduated Harvard, served as an alderman in New York City, become an avid sportsman and big game hunter, conservationist, author, rancher and cowboy. In his lifetime he published no less than forty books, the first of which, “The Naval War of 1812” would be so highly rated as to become a reference for the U.S. Navy and required reading. He published it shortly after graduating Harvard, at age 24. He read at least one book every day, wrote around 150,000 letters and tons of articles and essays. His energy and force of character was the stuff of legends. Needless to say, he didn’t own a smart phone.
The differences between 1880 and 2023 are stark and unfair, I know. No radio, much less television. No mass media, save newspapers and magazines. The telegraph was in much wider use than the telephone. No transatlantic flights or national interstate system. Most people were used to walking a lot more than now. People of the “Gilded Age” were hardier folks, physically, than ourselves. We definitely take for granted the many advantages that our era’s technology, has given us. Instant communication in audio, written and video formats are available. The ease of transportation, and the speed, has spoiled us. We haven’t the patience I’m sure they had back then. The sophistication of our levels of distraction is off the charts.
We’re more distracted today than ever in the history of the human race. There are more methods and means of recreational entertainment than every other era combined. This is the age of the true “Couch Potato”. We have movies, television, and music of every kind, on tap. Our fingers caress the power of all known knowledge and what do we do with it? Bing-watch programs for hours, days and weeks. We play games. We “google” everything. When’s the last time anyone looked up something in an encyclopedia? Or read a book? The ease of access is mind-boggling, if you stop and think about it. That begs the question: are we any smarter for it? I sincerely doubt it.
We are definitely not healthier for it. Smartphone Zombies are everywhere. Walking around glued to a screen, watching the latest cat video, challenge or fails. Conversation is slowly dying out, becoming a lost art. Society is not being well-served by media stream. It loses out to commercialism. Young people are not learning how to communicate with others in a real sense. The language we use is being abused as well. While people are busy worrying about what pronouns to address one another as, everyone has forgotten how to spell and use their native English. The one place where people do communicate (the “comment” sections) is so fraught with errors as to give the most liberal of junior high English teachers a series of mini-strokes as they read them. So what do we do?
Parents, quit making a babysitter out of media. Have that child go outside. Better yet, go outside with them. Play ball, walk, run, skip rocks across the pond. Anything. Play boardgames. Ride bikes. Show them how to be a kid. Get back in touch with your own inner child. All of this will bring you closer together and teach some lessons along the way. You’ll appreciate the lessons, and the memories, a lot more when you get older. Those cat videos will still be there. They’re fun. You won’t reminisce about them twenty years from now with your kid, though. Let’s all try and get out there and do some things with them that we will remember. Even if you don’t have kids, you can do your part. Take a few extra minutes out of your day to read. Yes, read. A newspaper, a book even. Gasp! How about having a real conversation with a total stranger? It can be a pleasure, when you’re not in such a rush. Tell a joke, a story, or just make small talk. We’re all in this race called life together, and nobody’s getting out alive. We might as well get to know each other on the way to the finish line. See y’all out there!
Rolling Stones 