Posted by Loulou on Apr 5, 2016 | 10 comments

I wonder if she’ll catch me copying this from her journals…

Today, I am sharing some of mama’s thoughts that she actually put down on paper over 20 years ago!!!

Ring any bells?

Things are out of hand. Overload. Semantic stress. Word weary. The numbers racket. What will our lives be like in say, five years? Ten years? Twenty? Unimaginable. Even the pocket organizers pale before the onslaught of info that accumulates each day and multiplies the next. An example: I am attempting to re-do my address book, which has so much written-in info thatI cannot read any of the original computer-generated names (for that matter, there are too many hyphenated words in the world; note the last sentence!). I look up a name and find that the original telephone number has a prefix that has been changed due to the growing urban area in which we live. Ao: same number, different prefix. Then I notice that there is a fax number (prefix also changed, but may change again when person moves or urban area sprawls once more in six months), a private pager number, an alternative week-end number (this person has the good fortune to leave urban sprawl when necessary) and last but not least, an Email address. I count, in all, oh, wait, there is an 800 number, too, for free calls to the business and there is an 82 request, just in case I happen to be a heavy breather and can’t get through. So, I cound, once again, in all: FORTY NUMBERS, forty two if you count the heavy breather one and one Email. Now multiply this number, more or less, but usually more) times the number of people you contact in a day and the number of days in the year. Exhaustion. Brain neuron short-out (another hyphen). Stress worse than a mother-in-law’s visit (not my mother-in-law, of course, but some mothers-in-law) or leaving the salt out of 6000 loaves of bread (I had a bakery). What will the future look like? This information is everyone nightmare, and yet we cannot live without it. But how will we live? Gone the days of leisurely reading a book, doing your nails, making a quiet dinner for two, pruning the roses, going fishing, and that most important non-activity from whence all good ideas spring: daydreaming. Gone, gone, gone. And we, the informationally-impaired and data-depleted, shall head out in the other direction, down the superhighway at breakbrain speed with vitamin-fortified bodies clad in clothes made for Mir, address books half the luggage, straight into cyberspace, never to return again to just… being.

And in 2016, on we go, IPhone and IPad in hand with computers on our watches and more new gadgets to come on which to Twitter, Tweet, Interface, date, bond, get Pinterest, make deals, pay bills, vote, chat, blog, scream, protest and more.

And guess what. Even less time for daydreaming…

Carve out a place in your day for that. I can vouch for the pleasure of it.