I poured myself a bowl of cereal recently (at a time that I consider an early morning) and as I set down the box I saw the back of the box with dozens of multi-colored letters on it. I realized nearly immediately I was looking at a crossword puzzle. Beside the letters were a list of questions such as
what does the monkey eat with his cereal? and
what's the shape of this cereal?
This sight immediately took me to the days of sitting around my kitchen table as a child reading the back of my cereal box, unscrambling letters, finding words, reading jokes. I thought "What happened to the back of cereal boxes?" I thought, "Do the 'back of cereal boxes' still exist?" and then immediately, "Who has time to read the back of a cereal box?"
I had woken up reading that morning, but I was not the simple yet enthralling back of a cereal box, it was the 7 point font, on a 4 inch screen. In the first few minutes of my consciousness, dozens of thoughts, ideas, people, connections jolted to a start as I read or watched or saw the latest happenings of my 900 closest friends. I can only imagine what was actually happening with my neurons. Staring at the cereal box, I saw this glimpse of a simpler life: thinking of only the most pressing things in the morning, slowly thinking of what the day will hold and then waking my brain up by piecing together the
food a monkey might like with their cereal or
the shape of the cereal and then searching for the answer amidst the multi-colored alphabet soup.
Instead, I wake up to an LED screen and what I missed in Russia, Syria, Brazil, China, you name it, in my 6-8 hours of forced unconsciousness-- feeling left behind before my brain has even realized it needs to be awake.
I am certainly not the first to write on busy-ness; nor am I the most informed, nor the most profound. I will likely say nothing in this blog that has not been said before; however, I still must ask -
what are we doing? One could as what are we
not doing, but truly, what are we doing with our lives?
Why has 24 hours become too few for a day? What are we doing that the time we have is not enough?
I don't know that an era of "the back of cereal boxes" ever truly existed. If it did, it seems it would have been something of Mayberry and The Cleavers, but surely life - especially in the Western world, I cannot speak for other parts with any true knowledge - was not always so
hay-wire.
Do we really all need to be experts on foreign and domestic affairs; international finance; every major global crisis that arises; all major environmental issues and concerns; domestic and foreign politics; the latest social media trends; the latest #hashtags; #PokemonGO #Rio2016 #win #me; the best vines; that lady with the wookie mask; the happenings of celebrities who live often thousands of miles away; and the best in music and movie entertainment? This does not even mention that we are supposed to pay our bills, eat, sustain relationships and
do our jobs. Why do we feel the need to
do and
be and
know "everything."
Who has time for hobbies when mere
existing has become a hobby in and of itself?
We need to be the best friend, best significant other, best employee, best citizen. I think I heard it referred to as a "trophies for everyone" age. But why has this expansion of knowledge caused such an expansion of self importance? Why must we
each be the man on the headline, the woman on the Today show, the girl on the reality show, the child in the talent show? We all seek so desperately to be important and to be acknowledge in this generation. Is it that social media has made acknowledgement a norm rather than an honor or highlight? But then you can't hear
anything as you try to hear
everything. I feel like I end up being (or, rather, feeling like) "nothing" as I try to be "everything."
I fear sometimes that this generation will be titled "The Aimless Generation," losing ourselves while we were standing still scouting every horizon. We are a generation of the wife in Fahrenheit 451, talking to our screens while missing the reality that is all around us.
I fear the busyness of this generation and its long-lasting effects. I can't quite see what they'll be, but I've seen how destructive the noise has been to my own plans and goals and productivity. I've sought to simultaneously pursue paths A, B, and C because they're all "right in front of me," all to find myself heading down path D or no path at all. What will the larger effect be of an entire generation knowing everything and nothing all at once? -- a world full of "experts," but no one of knowledge. I know it's starting to sound a bit dystopian, but when does it all reach a breaking point? Or does it just sit at the threshold of breaking indefinitely?
I suppose nothing is really so wrong, but one can't help but feel something has been lost amidst it all. Amidst the rush it feels like we lost (or lost sight of) the sweet and sacred things that exist in the quiet.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe children will be smarter for knowing how to work an iPad before they can walk. "They'll learn much more than I'll ever know." But maybe I'm not, maybe we
are missing something. Maybe we have lost what can only be heard in the quiet, seen in the serene. Maybe one day they'll link this to cancer - it's happened before.
Whether right or wrong, I miss it. I miss the simplicity of the back of cereal boxes. I miss mornings spent with the people around me rather than the ones in my screen. I miss family movie nights uninterrupted by tweets and texts buzzing in and swooshing out. I guess I'm just an idealist.
But, what would happen if we made space for the backs of cereal boxes again? Perhaps we'd find space for a lot more.
