NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- As our world modernizes, I can’t help but miss a fading sense of home as it gets replaced with this manufactured product of a planet. I crave for some semblance of the“good old days” that my generation only has a chance to see in classic movies.
I wish for days when young men were exactly that and had class and manners; days when women dressed up and respected themselves. My generation holds little to no resemblance to what used to be with communication, education, and entertainment. I can’t remember the last time I received a hand-written letter, which I think is a lost art that definitely needs to be brought back.
As for face to face communication; it’s practically foreign. Friends go to friends’ houses to text each other or other friends. People text on their phones during dinner and that goes for all ages. Phones are checked like they’re children, while actual children go neglected and receive less and less attention.
It’s sad really, how lonely our planet has gotten. Everyone wants to make it big in a world that does nothing but get smaller. Even as we come closer together as a population, we’re all so lonely at the core. Religion has become commercialized and church has lost its purpose. What a world of difference church could make in people’s lives but alas, “there’s no time.”
The saddest part is what we make take for granted. What society demands we make time for. We can’t walk our dogs to the park because we have so much homework. We can’t sing to our children because we have work so we stick them in front of a TV instead. We can’t think about the future repercussions because we’re too busy trying to make things more efficient for today. Well maybe efficiency isn’t the answer. Maybe depending on fast food, technology, supermarkets, and instruction manuals isn’t the answer. Maybe we just need a good old neighborhood get together.
But I know I’m not alone when I say I hardly know my neighbors’ names. Maybe we need family holidays. But I know families are anything but close together. Maybe we need to just stop for a while; stop trying to come out with the newest thing, or the next fad and just look at what we have. Look or flat out stare at what we have.
If we knew how much time we each had, I bet we’d live differently. I bet we’d set aside time for things to just sink in. But I know we’ll never look hard enough at things and we’ll never truly appreciate what it means to be alive. I just wish we’d embrace the earth more. Not in a "lets-dig-up-all-the-resources kind of way," but in a "kiss-the-Earth kind of way."
I think, if we all woke up tomorrow with only the things we’ve said we’re thankful for, or only the things we’ve taken the time to appreciate, could we survive? Maybe we could. Or maybe we’ve just become so obsessed with what we can touch that we’ve lost contact with what we can feel.
It’s a shame really.
Because I wish we all dressed up to leave the house. I wish everyone spoke with careful grammar and had manners beyond a "thank you." I wish we had more families that stayed as families.
I wish we were in this together. I wish we could have enough faith in our environment to be able to take a walk without fearing an all too common misfortune of kidnapping or assault. I wish people looked up at the stars more and thought of how many years ago they must have shone and all the time it took for the light to reach us. I wish people didn’t spend time preparing for the end of the world and actually spent time appreciating and being nice to each other.
I wish we were in this together. I wish we could have enough faith in our environment to be able to take a walk without fearing an all too common misfortune of kidnapping or assault. I wish people looked up at the stars more and thought of how many years ago they must have shone and all the time it took for the light to reach us. I wish people didn’t spend time preparing for the end of the world and actually spent time appreciating and being nice to each other.
I wish kids didn’t grow up so fast.
I wish we didn’t operate this planet as a human race for solely our benefit and destroy anything that doesn’t add convenience to our lives. I wish we took better care of our planet. I wish this perfect planet existed; one with flaws and imperfections, and inhabitants that embraced them all, and inhabitants that embraced each other.