I’m old and certainly not very cool. I don’t know that I ever was. I don’t belong here in the age of selfies, but I’m not so sure I belonged in the age of transistor radios.<\/p>\n
I don’t understand selfie-sticks. I don’t understand the ego behind selfies. I grew up in the age when Polaroid cameras were all the rage, but I don’t remember anyone taking selfies and passing them around.<\/p>\n
I don’t understand why anyone needs a life trainer. Do you. I’m lost in this age of instant gratification made instantly instantaneous with the swipe of a smart phone. What do the unattractive. unpopular and unwanted feel like in these days of selfies and life trainers? How do they escape? How do they feel? How do they cope?<\/p>\n
I think I know.<\/p>\n
Even when I was young, I lived in a different world than my peers. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of my “ancient soul”. When I was seventeen-years-old one of my best friends at the time told me I had an ancient soul. He told me I came from another time and another place. That I was like trapped between centuries.<\/p>\n
At the time I found it off-putting; I didn\u2019t take it as a compliment. I tried to find a different soul and chose a lifestyle of which I\u2019m not proud. I did things then that were contrary to everything I knew to be right and good. I battled my ancient soul because I hated being different.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m far past seventeen now and I\u2019ve become comfortable with my ancient soul. I find peace and comfort in the little pleasures of life: a good book, watching the greening of spring, listening to the wind and imagining sailing on a vast ocean without a destination, or just watching people pass by. I never really fit in when I was seventeen. It very much did make me uncomfortable then, but it does not make me uncomfortable in the least now.<\/p>\n
I see the world differently than others see it. I sometimes withdraw too far into myself and don\u2019t often give good people a chance. I have many faults \u2013 an ancient soul offers no protection from making mistakes or making misguided decisions.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I\u2019m the ancient mariner or the town crier or a baker of bread in a small colonial town. Most of the time though, I spend observing the behavior of people as they hurry from somewhere to somewhere else, and I am bewildered. People texting, taking pictures of themselves and others, updating their social networking pages or tweeting about some new coffee-based drink at Starbucks. They\u2019re connected 24\/7 \u2014 and seem so lost when they\u2019re not connected. I wonder what can possibly be so great about being connected to someone, sometimes anyone, all the time.<\/p>\n
Why is anything new, good, and everything old, bad? I just don\u2019t understand it. And I don\u2019t think I ever will. In order to supply us with all things new, the Earth is plundered and human beings exploited. The factories in China are alive with the sounds of misery and sadness, with the sounds of twelve-year-old children working fourteen-hour days, with the sounds of fathers and mothers working for $2.00 a day to make your next pair of $200 running shoes or your next smart phone or tablet\u2026 or laptop or PC\u2026or shirt, or pants, or\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll bet all these people I see rushing about today, texting and trying to stay constantly connected, don\u2019t really give a damn about who made their smart phone or tablet. They don\u2019t look into their screens and see the sweat and sadness of the children who toiled long days to make it; they don\u2019t give a thought about the sweat of mothers and fathers and children by whose hands the devices that connect them were made. They see only the smiling face of a new boyfriend or girlfriend \u2013 or the tweet from a \u201cfriend\u201d about the trendy new restaurant where they are having dinner.<\/p>\n
So abused and overused, the word friendship has lost its meaning; the word love is so ubiquitous that it means the same as the word like. To be seen and to be seen and never be disconnected from someone, anyone, everyone, is the new mobile mantra. The world is all about image we project and seldom about the substance within. Self-worth and self-esteem come from the outside and not from the inside in this new age of technology.<\/p>\n
The fashions we wear, the shoes on our feet, and the devices that keep us connected to a loose and unfathomable web of \u201cfriends\u201d were almost certainly fashioned by the exploited poor and underprivileged. Our appetite for the things we desire and think we need create the hunger that those who pillage the Earth and destroy its beauty and eploit its people happily and greedily feed.<\/p>\n
We live in the world of the instantaneous. There\u2019s an instant feel-good for everything. No one need suffer anything anymore \u2013 or at least for very long. For every pain or sorrow or ache technology offers a panacea. if we\u2019re hungry, there\u2019s instant food. If we\u2019re down, there\u2019s a pill for an instant up. If we\u2019re tired there\u2019s an instant stimulent. If we\u2019re lonely all we need to do is create a profile on a dating site and instantly have our egos assuaged and our loneliness cured by anyone, someone, it doesn\u2019t matter who.<\/p>\n
As soon as our profile goes up we get attention imediately because someone \u2014 anyone \u2014 will connect with us and ease our emptiness and loneliness. Or so we think. And if the image we project is good enough, we will will never have to worry about anything substantial. In this world of illusion and image \u2014 image is all that matters.<\/p>\n
Attractiveness is the universal aphrodesiac.<\/p>\n
Yet, with all this instantaneous gratification available to us, we still may end up empty and aching \u2014 and not ever know why. There is a hollowness to all this that is almost tangible to me. I feel it everywhere, as if we\u2019re all empty shells, all so worried about being filled that we don\u2019t really stop and think of what we are being being filled with.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve become slaves to the instant world we\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n
This new age has created so many new and deeper kinds of sadness and emptiness and it\u2019s contributing to an epidemic of low self-esteem. Loyalty means little, integrity is for moralists, fun is wherever you find it, instant gratification is just a mouse-click or tap on a tablet away. But there\u2019s one thing missing in this connected world and that is happiness. The more we seek instant happiness the more we discover how elusive happiness can be.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve lost our ability to enjoy the pleasures of being alone. We are too busy with all our toys and trying to stay connected that we seldom stop to enjoy beauty of the world around us or the inner-peace that we can find in the serenity of silence.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve become addicted to being constantly connected. We\u2019ve become terrified of being alone. We\u2019ve forgotten how to love ourselves.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t see anyone today who looked the least bit happy. Everyone seemed too busy staying connected to be happy. They seemed lost in a world that doesn\u2019t really exist and too busy to think about the important things \u2014 like who made that iPhone they\u2019re using? What kind of miserable exploitation is is that poor child enduring. Does that child even have enough to eat?<\/p>\n
If you mention this to someone they\u2019ll tell me there\u2019s nothing they can do about it \u2013 it\u2019s just how things are. They will hardly look up from there iPads or smartphones to give it any thought let alone give me a thoughtful answer. There\u2019s nothing I can do about it, it\u2019s just how things are.<\/p>\n
The exploitation of mankind didn\u2019t begin in this new age, but it is alive and growing in the sweatshops of China. And the products of this immoral exploitation of children and of mothers and fathers end up in the hands of us, the connected. I wonder who is happier? The child in the sweatshop or the person with the smart phone? The child\u2019s unhappiness and sorrow is real and understandable and not by his or her own choice. Maybe that guy over there using his smart phone is unhappy because he didn\u2019t receive his daily quota of texts from his friends. Or the girl over there may be grieving because the guy she met yesterday hasn\u2019t called her yet today.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know the answer. All I know is the world makes less and less sense to me than it did when I was seventeen. Maybe trying to behave the way everyone expected me to insulated me for a while, but it never made me happy.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that I haven\u2019t embraced technology. I have and I\u2019m very good with it. I know more about computers and the Internet than most. And I\u2019m a hypocrite because I\u2019m typing on a computer most likely made by some exploited ten-year-old girl working fourteen-hour days in some inhumane and horrid sweatshop in Indonesia. And I think \u2014 I\u2019m typing these words on that poor little girl\u2019s tears.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re all hypocrites, but I really don\u2019t want to be. If I could travel anywhere in time and space I\u2019d be living in the 18th century making candles or shoes or tending a general store. Or alone by the sea in a lighthouse keeping mariners away from the rocky shoals on some dark foggy night.<\/p>\n
I often wonder how much people would want to connect after spending the day washing laundry by hand, plowing fields with with plows pulled by horses, or canning enough vegetables to last a long, cold winter. I wonder if they would know themselves better. I wonder if they would become more comfortable with their own inner voice instead of needing the feedback of everyone else to feel worthwhile.<\/p>\n
One thing for sure \u2014 the more I see of this new age, the less comfortable I become. Where can I find substance in an increasingly superficial world. It is no wonder that happiness has to be created from moment to moment \u2013 and never seems to last. Happiness is created from moment to moment because it can be \u2014 technology has made it possible.<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019m a hypocrite but I don\u2019t want to be. I see a world disconnected even as its people become more connected. People lost in a vast maze of interconnectivity where everyone is connected but no one really connects.<\/p>\n
New is better. Old is worse. That goes for everything \u2014 technology and people too. People aren\u2019t so willing to work out problems with their husbands or wives or girlfriends of boyfriends. If they aren\u2019t like we want them to be we can swtich them out with a click. Not many consider that the new becomes the old and then, of course, we will have to switch them out for something newer.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m typing this on a computer made in a dreary, dirty sweatshop. This instrument of technology was fashioned by tired hands of an exploited mother, father or child.<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019m a hypocrite too.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a hypocrite but I\u2019m not at all comfortable with it. I wish there were still lighthouse keepers \u2014 I\u2019d apply for the job right now. Alone in a lighthouse on the shore of a lake \u2014 with the sound of the waves would be the only connection I\u2019d need; I\u2019d be connected to the sea, connected connected to the Earth. Surrounded by good books, I imagine myself looking out into a dark November night and seeing ship in the distance and feeling worthwhile because I\u2019m the one who will keep that ship from running aground on the rocky reefs in the bay. I\u2019d be alone on the sea, but I\u2019d never be lonely.<\/p>\n
In world where image is far more important than substance, I feel alone and isolated. Who understands the thoughts of an ancient soul?<\/p>\n
My ancient soul is restless and yearning.<\/p>\n
And I know exactly why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My Ancient Soul I’m old and certainly not very cool. I don’t know that I ever was. I don’t belong here in the age of selfies, but I’m not so sure I belonged in the age of transistor radios. I don’t understand selfie-sticks. I don’t understand the ego behind selfies. I grew up in the age when Polaroid\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228],"tags":[1720],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13056,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13055\/revisions\/13056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}