Thanks to the Internet, everything we can imagine want or need is instant – reading, watching, learning, reacting, deliveries, and even, believe it or not, Instapot for cooking. Today, we “friend” each other and have a zillion instant friends.
While instant or immediate answers for learning or researching some word or subject can be useful, most of the time, the knee jerk response or comment is out there, too often without enough consideration.
Look at potential political candidates whose Instagram comment from years ago that may have been written in haste without forethought is out there and too little too late. Career over.
We grew up in a time when we wrote letters, when we took the time to carefully compose our thoughts. I can recall my mother helping me write those letters, reminding me to say something “nice” in both a thank you letter and a condolence letter. Now it is an email or text or Facebook message.
There was no CNN and instant Breaking News. There was a morning and evening newspaper delivered, which was how we got our news. Later, there was the Nightly News and then the McNeil-Lehrer Report.
When our children were little, we were privileged to have a new television program called “Sesame Street”. It was on at a specific time of day and that was a precious time for us to relax as our kids sat in front of the television. Along came a FAX machine, a VCR and the beginning of more and more instant media and the Internet and the world of instant everything became part of our everyday vernacular:
“TEXT me your info”.
“TEXT me if you want to meet for drinks.”
“Watch HGTV Tiny House. You can watch it any time.”
And one of the reasons we have survived this past year,
“Let’s meet on Zoom”
One could argue that this is progress and aren’t we lucky and we are not suggesting that we go back to writing on cave walls, but perhaps we might pause for a minute and think about what we have lost:
Maybe we have lost the ability to give more time and consideration to complex issues and problems.
Maybe we have limited creativity to blossom because we want answers and solutions immediately.
We have created a world where anyone can be a hero online or a monster or a mean-spirited bully.
We have created a world where everything stays, there is no “take back” as we used to say as kids. Screenshots last forever.
That being said, our instant everything now world has delivered positive impacts:
We can send a text to a friend who is ill and just say “Hi Thinking of You”.
We can send a funny cartoon to one of our kids.
We can control every level of entertainment from news, to, sports to films to educational programming anytime.
We can Facetime with our family and send ridiculously funny videos of the dog racing around the house.
Facebook tells us when it is a birthday of a friend, so we can send good wishes.
Perhaps we are saying that there are good and not so good things about this Instant world in which we live. Certainly, it sustained us during this past year of hibernation.
Perhaps what we have discovered is that we need to find a rhythm that works for us. Nature shows us that there is a rhythm to life. A walk through the woods can remind us that seeds and saplings and new growth emerge in a pattern of life with no regard for immediate, we want it now deliverables. And baby chicks are born after a certain number of days of incubation. Watch a PBS Nature program where the camera shows us the changing of the seasons in high speed, from snow cover to spring through to summer. Fascinating but we know that it takes time. As should we.
Let’s text and Facetime and Zoom and use Twitter and Instagram but let’s also take time to breathe and contemplate. Let’s not forget our imagination and our ability to pause before we look for immediate answers. Let’s be grateful for our ability to consider possible solutions and opinions. This is a fundamental part of what makes us human.
Ciao
Lucy and Claudia