DELETE!
April 15th, 2009
I understand that in this age of consumerism, that we are a society that doesn’t hold tight to many things. We have been classified as a throw away society. And if you don’t believe that, just drive down any street in Suburbia, USA the night before trash pick-up. There are dressers, appliances, computer monitors and other items stacked near the trash cans – heading for the dump…or some man’s junk store.
Unfortunately, we are filling the landfills with items that aren’t broken, aren’t ruined – we are filling these dumps with items that only have one fault and that is that they are just not as shiny and not as attractive as the new stuff on the store shelves. They may have a few blemishes and aren’t as perfect as they used to be. Sadly, they are tried and true – but just not good enough…anymore.
So what is my point of this? Is it to lecture the readers on the moral obligation to recycle? Well, I do worry about our “world” and what we are doing to it and how we are leaving it for our children. But actually, the state of our environment isn’t what I have on my mind right now. It is something that goes deeper and is even more unsettling. It is about a trend I have noticed in the recent years. It is the ability to throw away people. It is the disturbing way that we delete people out of our lives.
We are such an instant society now. We can be in contact with anyone, anywhere at any time. We can “Twitter” and follow each other through our world, our cyber world. We can share up to date moments on Facebook via our cell phones. We email wedding invitations and text birthday greetings. And we can reach out to each other whenever we want. But as fast as we can reach out and connect with someone, we can also delete them out of our lives. And sadly, it can be done so easy. A few keystrokes, a block here or there and that person can be cut from your life.
The reasons may vary and some may be very necessary – but I think that since our world is so instant and up to the moment now, we lose the idea of a real forever. We don’t have that sense commitment and responsibility to a relationship as we used to. We don’t have to bother with the downs that follow the ups in our relationships. Why bother? There is always someone else on our friends’ list, another person to email from dating.com, someone else to send an instant message or text. In this throwaway society, we are too quick to hit the delete key. And sadly, our world has become so connected that we have become disconnected from what is actually real, tried and true.
Deb
