Have you noticed lately how much time your new technologies are saving you...? How's that...! You say you're actually working harder than ever just to keep up...?
Well, you're not alone. Surveys report most Americans are now working longer not shorter hours. So what's up with all those time-saving promises that came with all these time-conquering widgets? History suggests a recurring irony: Whenever we come upon new tools, we tend to use them to do new things. Instead of savoring our new free-time, we find new things to do with it.
Time -- that majestic mystery defined so differently by scientists, poets, lovers, and bosses. Here's how I try to understand it. The "new things" now available to me need not be too arduous or too adventuress. Rather than exhausting world cruises, grueling mountain climbs, or wearing more glamorous purple in more glamorous places, how about a few of the smaller discoveries I missed along the way. Each about as old as time itself:
* I've made a pledge to take those squadrons of birds in my neighborhood far more seriously. Their songs, their colors, their flight, their freedom intoxicate me. I wonder why I took so long to meet them.
* Coffee is another small but intoxicating pleasure. This habit of pour, gulp, and dash has to stop. One of the "new things" I will do is master the morning art of the perfect-cup-of-coffee. An ancient art silly-me never took the time to learn.
* Garden flowers are, to be sure, one of nature's most fragrant gifts. Occasionally I've noticed these gifts scattered about my neighborhood. Why in the name of all that is holy shouldn't I use the time to own this gift for myself. To plunge untested fingers into black earth and see if together we can't turn it green.
* Lost friends, now they are among life's supreme gifts. Perhaps the best "new thing" these widgets have endowed us with is instant digital-outreach to find and love them all over again. Facebook may be many things to many reporters, but what grander joy than spanning the years and miles that have for so long separated us.
One more thing about time. If only our new time-saving widgets could shorten the time it takes us to eventually change our foolish minds about such foolish issues as gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, the mentally and physically challenged. In time we do change, but oh the lost time it takes.
Tick, tick, tick.....
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