You or Us?

Gaggles of commuters with heads tipped down toward their phones. News being read but not on paper. Fewer ads on the tiny electronic windows on the world. But plenty of images and messages.

Clothing styles and fashions of the day are on parade. So too the shoes, eyewear and chic. It permeates the routine anonymously. We know it but we don’t pay attention to it. And the music as well. Ever present in our days just like the electronic beeps and flashes of our hand held devices. No more guessing on what is going on in the world, or the stock market, or what’s on sale nearby.

So too our accessibility to others. The phone rings, computer dings, and text messages flow. We are in demand and being informed of something.

The train into the city is alight with advertisements and posters. Some lit, some dark. But messages incessantly promoted and sent to eyes and minds not alert to surroundings.

Cars are automatic. We drive them to work and to the store and to our homes. The radio blares its music and messages, also incessantly unless we turn to I-pods and CDs, or private satellite radio stations with few marketing interruptions. Sometimes we turn the sound system off and just think our thoughts in private.

Surrounding cars are shaped, fluid, sporty, flashy. We notice and wonder what it would be like to pilot. We ‘feel’ the reticulated seats supporting our body just so. We breathe in the smell of the rich leather interior, and try to imagine the hushed interior of a well constructed cabin sound proofed against the world.

Neighborhoods run past our windows, too. High rises glittering with glass and balconies and twinkling lights suggesting interiors too rad to imagine. Another life, another style of living, another role we might try on for ourself?

And homes, mansions really, even the Mc-mansions that draw our attention to a life we don’t now have. What is this allure to what we don’t own, don’t have access to, may never have. Or need?

We are pulsing through life in an ocean of messages. Do we conform? If we do, for how long? Is it a life-long fascination or just a passing fancy? When do we awake to a reality that has always been with us and begs our attention?

The ‘you’ generation is really the ‘me’ generation, or something like it. One does not pretend to know precisely about this, or else we demonstrate our own attention to such fancies? The trouble with all this is the big distraction.

What is important? What kind of things matter to me? Why do they? Are they because they define me in some way? Or are they a pattern, a template I can use to fashion my own life so I feel full and complete? Or maybe the things that matter are pulling me outside of myself toward something larger. Does that larger thing hold a promise to me, a meaning that fulfills an inner ache?

The ‘me’ is shifting to ‘we’?

Hope throbs with the thought.

In time we become bored, not because no one listens, that is for the younger youth among us. We become bored most likely because the wanted thing no longer holds our attention. It has become passé. It is now old and out of fashion.

We are bored until ‘we’ crashes into our lives and brings with it purpose and value and future. It has always been there beckoning to us. The we of existence is all of us yearning for similar things that truly matter.

Such things as smiles, appreciation for sounds, sights, and people bustling toward the needs of others. We cannot understand that until we listen, feel and reach out to touch others so we can know them more fully. The mysteries of life are not so hidden. They are in plain sight for us to see – so we can become we.

You or Us? Your land or mine. Or ours? What shared religions and philosophies do we have, and do they matter? Maybe we make this too difficult.

We arise from bed in the morning. We sit up and shake out the stiffness. We stretch legs and feet, pull on sweats and shirt, clamber up and make the rounds of rooms turning on lights, opening drapes, starting the water to boil. Off to the bathroom for refreshment and then to the computer to start the day.

We check the news, the personal messages, and then our routines to pursue for the next 16 hours. We find the needs of others and focus on them. We are not aware of ourself until the tea kettle whistles. But soon after, sipping the fresh brew, we are off on a trek of the mind once again.

The us is fuller than me. Us embraces and fulfills.

Us of all age groups need this. It pulls us out of bed in the morning. It forces us to shut off the TV and pick up a book. Or a nap to rest and refresh the mind.

Hmmm. I’ll have to think of this a little more.

And you?

November 18, 2015