When my sister and I were young, we used to wait eagerly for our dad to return home from work. He would usually come in really tired from the local train travel but always had a big smile for us. Mom would quickly make piping hot tea which my dad would leave on the side table till it was really cold and had a thin milky film on it. Mom always complained about it. Dad would ask us about our day and then bury his nose in the newspaper. That was another thing my mom complained about. Especially on Sundays. She would say that the newspaper was like my dad's second wife. But a man can only read so much news. Eventually my dad would put it down and we had a nice warm family dinner, chit-chatting, my sis and I monkeying around, dad subtly flirting with mom and then off to bed. Sometimes we watched T.V, but those were the days of Doordarshan. The only thing worth watching was the News and even that was government controlled.
These days there are so many things to help your pass time and communicate with your friends. Has anyone stopped to think if it's stopping you from communicating with your family? There are smart-phones with that Facebook app loaded in it. There are high-definition T.Vs with programming to suit all ages and there are Hi-Fi music systems to blast your ears and brains to space. Dinner is usually had in front of the T.V followed by an update about it in Facebook.
Does anyone even think about how much of their life is getting wasted in updating and checking updates from random acquaintances while the people who really care about them are being ignored at home? How can anyone achieve intimacy if they are checking their phones even in bed? Then one fine day you will realise that life has passed you by and you made no real bonds. You might die and some old school-mate or ex-colleague would make a "R.I.P" update about you on Facebook.
Maybe that's all there is to it. Maybe that's all we deserve.
6 comments:
I agree with your post.We have lost the ability to enjoy simple pleasures of life and the joy of in person interaction thanks to the social media fever.Hence i quite facebook.
That may sound drastic to most and people have been shocked, surprised or mildly surprised with my decision to get off facebook.However for some strange reason i felt liberated once i did that.
I have been thinking of doing that. But there are so many people I don't meet face to face and I'd like to share their thoughts once in a while. However I don't want Facebook to completely replace my interactions in the real world. It's about finding that balance which unfortunately a lot of people can't. At the end of the day it's a man-made program and we are in control. Some people forget that and let it control them.
Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. Nice post. I wonder so too, many times. Miss those days of Doordarshan and those times when there was so much to laugh and talk about in the family, and so much to cook and taste! :) We are turning into a generation of instant messaging and instant food.
I agree with you completely Seema. In fact, I sometimes find myself fatigued and burdened by technology. I, for one, find myself incapable of handling so much interaction all the time - more than a thousand 'friends' and so much going on with each one and the smallest thing shared in one-two line updates / status messages. I need to talk to the person - at least on the phone if not face to face; and of those thousand, there are only a handful who are friends...the rest are acquaintances at best. Knowing how I feel about all this, I didn't join FB at all. Neither did one friend at office. Many people are constantly pestering us to join and we have steadfastly resisted. We're teasingly called outdated / old / boring :) We laugh and tell them that it doesn't matter what they call us or think of us...we're happy this way and that's all that matters to us :)
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