Make love, not war
Back in the ’60s the world was in turmoil. Our country was at war, (an un-popular war on many fronts), in a small country thousands of miles away, the economy was crazy, music was loud and rebellious, parents struggled “to parent”, children resisted parenting, anti-God sentiments were escalating, tolerance for everyone’s point of view was huge from a lot of people, and did not exist from others. It was a time of testing for everyone. Some of us made it through without major scars, other friends of mine still carrying deep hurts from that time.
I think it was the beginning of people moving from one pace of life into the fast lane for many, many people. A new pace of life was launched. Faster and faster and faster. Multi-tasking, 24/7, electronic leashes, helicopter parents, smart phones, www.whatever, it continues to consume us.
I read an article in the NY Times a couple of weeks ago that spoke to this life that many of us have adopted, or been sucked into, myself included. I’m not as bad as I used to be, most of you know why, but I still am a fringe player in this crazy game. The name of the article was Tweet Less, Kiss More. It spoke to my insides. Since most of you will never click over and read it, if I was to give you a link, here it is, copied in part.
“I’m not opposed to the remarkable technological advances of the past several years. I don’t want to go back to typewriters and carbon paper and yellowing clips from the newspaper morgue. I just think that we should treat technology like any other tool. We should control it, bending it to our human purposes.
Let’s put down at least some of these gadgets and spend a little time just being ourselves. One of the essential problems of our society is that we have a tendency, amid all the craziness that surrounds us, to lose sight of what is truly human in ourselves, and that includes our own individual needs — those very special, mostly nonmaterial things that would fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace those around us.
There’s a character in the August Wilson play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” who says everyone has a song inside of him or her, and that you lose sight of that song at your peril. If you get out of touch with your song, forget how to sing it, you’re bound to end up frustrated and dissatisfied.
As this character says, recalling a time when he was out of touch with his own song, “Something wasn’t making my heart smooth and easy.”
I don’t think we can stay in touch with our song by constantly Twittering or tweeting, or thumbing out messages on our BlackBerrys, or piling up virtual friends on Facebook.
We need to reduce the speed limits of our lives. We need to savor the trip. Leave the cellphone at home every once in awhile. Try kissing more and tweeting less. And stop talking so much.
Listen.
Other people have something to say, too. And when they don’t, that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined. That is when you will begin to hear your song. That’s when your best thoughts take hold, and you become really you.”
SLOW DOWN, SAVOR THE TRIP,…..TRY KISSING MORE AND TWEETING LESS.
If you like what you’ve read in this post, re-tweet it so others can share in the enjoyment. Just kidding, try kissing instead.