I just
commented on a blog, that I feel out of touch with the world around me.
I lived most of my life without a cell
phone. If I needed to make a telephone
call I waited until I got home or reached my destination – and I didn’t miss
anything by not having a phone appendage on my body.
It is the same with television. I was a teenager when we had our first
television (black and white 16 inch.) If
there was something I wanted to see I could turn it on at night after supper –
and I wasn’t deprived of news or entertainment.
Today I took
my youngest cat to the vet. There was a
TV in the waiting room blaring Good Morning America. When I go to the VA clinic they have a TV on
– usually on Fox. At the VA hospital
waiting room there is a TV – you can’t get away from it. Our
favorite Italian restaurant – upstairs in the lunch room there are three TVs,
often on different channels. The diners
we frequent all have televisions – usually on some stupid channel. Even
at McDonald's there is a TV going in the eating area.
Almost any waiting room you have to sit in
will have a TV playing. What the hell
is this, that we must be entertained all the time?
We are not
afraid of sickness or disease or destruction - we are afraid of boredom. We must have a TV; or cell phones that
display tweets, face book, internet, instant messaging, texting… We cannot sit quietly anywhere without
something to entertain us. We must have ambient noise.
There is no such thing as quiet, whether at
work, while we eat, while we exercise, while we meditate, while we play, while
we have sex and often while we sleep.
It is a
strange new world and I haven’t adapted.
Sometimes I just like to sit in the quiet.
the Ol’Buzzard
