Reality lives off-line
I’ve been on vacation for a week. One of the highlights of the respite was having lunch with one of Terry’s professors. Mr. Mott made a profound and lasting impression on my wonderful husband. (Thank you Mr. Mott.) Terry has so much respect for the man he cannot bring himself to call him Robert or, God forbid, Bob. Mr. Mott and his wife Edie are in their nineties and both sharp mentally, mobile and healthy. I asked both of them at lunch in a very nice restaurant, “Do you have smart phones and are you on the internet?” Mr. Mott uses a form of email I won’t go into, but otherwise the couple agreed that at their ages they were enjoying life just as it is without the invasion of technology. They both agreed that each day was so filled with thankfulness they are mobile and healthy there was no room for anything else.
During this vacation, I took the six days off from the 21st century and never once even looked at a computer. I didn’t answer anyone’s emails or write my weekly Young@Heart for the last week of March. I just lived in what I’ll call a techless world. Yes, I was party to using the GPS while we “Yelped” our way around San Diego and yeah, once I talked on Terry’s cell phone (which is now a very smart phone thanks to Flylady’s Robert), oh and yes, I used the computer timer on the oven in our condo we lived in for a week, but the rest of the time I enjoyed the real world right in front of me just like Mr. and Mrs. Mott.
There were times when I felt a little like a beloved family dog. Marla, Robert and Terry spent a great deal of our living room time on their thingamajig of choice while I sat and talked to myself, read a little, wrote on a yellow pad and played "retro" Solitaire. (That’s a game you play with a standard deck of real playing cards, dealt onto a real table.)
Don’t get me wrong, I love the 21st Century and all the geegaws that go with it, but I have to say, the real world is not going to come out with a quicker, smarter, smaller version. It is what it is in its magnificence and I have yet to scratch the surface of what it’s all about.
Life Balance and Inner Peace
I want to maintain a balance between virtual and real life. I want my virtual life to enhance my real life not de-hance it. That takes organization. Why do I always keep bumping into that word? By being organized with my time, I think I can devote my weekends to a keyboard-free two days, and as I face more than 140 emails I want to answer from last week, I am still going to quit at 5 pm.
They haven’t come up with E-food yet, but they will, you just wait and see. But first they’ll have to come out with E-you and E-me and then we’ll have to feed E-us so we’ll download E-forks, knives and spoons, set an E-table for an E-meal. Since that’s not the case, and my refrigerator is not an E-fridge, I have to go to the real grocery store and get real food to fix for a real dinner tonight.
I love you all as you balance between E and real.
P.S. For more peace and joy in your life please consider my latest book It is written precisely for those of use who are disorganized from a disorganized person in nervous remission....me!