1986...

a selfie before it was a selfie

I'm writing from the couch today and on the TV I'm running an old home movie from 1986. WOW...

My dad bought a brand new video camera when I was born. It was huge and expensive and worth every penny becuase now we can travel back in time whenever we please and remember the good old days.

My parent's house was out in the "country." The driveway was composed of rocks. It was a new build and my folks hadn't even installed the back deck yet. We had a great, big back yard and a second garage out back for my dad's cars. Beyond that, there was a good sized field with horses and only a few neighboring houses. Today, it's full on suburbia out there. Most of the orginal houses have been torn down and I remember the fire department burning one down for practice. The field was replaced with a neighborhood...

It always felt so quiet in the house. Like, Christmas morning quiet, everyday. I miss it. I rarely experience that type of quiet anymore. I live in a big, busy city now. I've got new constrution going up next door, big Texas trucks roaring by every few minutes, and somewhere nearby is a heliocoptor landing pad I only seem to notice in the middle of the night.

Watching this home video makes 1986 feel quiet...clam... slow... peaceful. Maybe that was just my Dad's filming style or maybe that is how it really was but it has me thinking...

Can we slow it all down or are we permantenlty on fast forward from here on out? Is this just a perception we have as our youth begins to dwindle, that things were simpler or slower when our lives began? Older readers, has the past decade really incresed the pace of life or is it all a perception of our generation embracing adulthood? I remember reading American transcendentalist writing, focused on breaking away from the "busy life" in modern society. If similar feelings were present then, can the technology of the past couple decades really be the culprit of our always-on mind sets? It seems like we just adapt at a young age to keep up with the ever increasing pace during our own lives, only to have the next generaion pick up where we left off, speeding ahead faster and faster.

Transcendentalists believe that society is what corrupts the purity of indivduals. Everything seems to be "on-the-go." There are times when I don't even sit down to eat a meal. I have to have the latest version of this electronic or that new car, or else! More, more, more. Quicker, better, faster, stronger. Good isn't good enough anymore. It can't be a quaint, simple house. It's a McMansion or bust.

If I have a point to make in all of this reminiscing and blabber it is this: stop and smell the freaking roses every once in a while. Cultivate peace and quiet however it works for you. We can't slow down time, but we can down slow ourselves.

 

 

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