Creating Balance in Our Modern Day World

On the one hand you have the pull of technology, on the other hand, you have the displacement of human interaction. One would readily blame technology for that displacement of human interaction, but sometimes I wonder. If human interaction were still the primary focus between individuals, the addictive nature of modern technology would have no leverage. It is in the missing human interaction that it finds its foothold.

Once upon a time families were a part of a larger community and it wasn't just a cliche saying when one said that it took a village to raise a child. Children had the benefit of plenty of other children, but also the benefit of many elders. In today's world, from the stark nuclear family to single-parenthood, from dangerous city neighborhoods to sparse rural areas with no blocks and no sidewalks, children have so much less of that human interaction and they need it. Just like teens need it, just like young adults need it, just like adults, aging adults and senior adults need it.

What we have instead is the steady separation and alienation of human interaction and the result is an ever more intricate effort to reach out and touch people. First the telegraph, then the telephone, each miraculous in its ability to reach out and touch people, and on it goes until there are computers and the world wide web and cell phones and texting.

Amidst all that the down home human interaction and creativity have been lost to video games, game boys, ipods, computers, cell phones, blackberries, and God only knows what more. It used to be that kids could have alot of fun in a pile of dirt with some sticks and whatever they could gather around. It used to be that reading, writing, drawing, playing music or even just sitting in silence were viable means of entertainment. And it's not that technology is bad, or that all those techi things aren't fun, it's just when they become mutually exclusive that dysfunction beams its shiny head into the picture and won't get out.

In our busy, hectic, overwhelming, struggling lives, we have to make room for the human interaction again. There has to be time to make up games. There has to be time to cuddle. There has to be time to just sit and talk. There has to be time to sing a song together. There has to be time to interact from heart to heart. And then there's also time to appreciate technology too, but instead of being a depraved subsitute for what the heart yearns for, it becomes a joyful addition.

Even in this crazy modern day world, there has to be balance. And the only way balance is going to happen, is if we make it happen. We can sit around and wish all day that things are different, mourn and lament the way things are, but we are the ones who make things different; we hold that ace, that trump, that power in our own hands.

Take action today. Life is calling for it.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2009 Darshan F Jessop