Living In a Sound Bite World

Looks like North Korea has continued with their plan for unilateral insanity and it smells like Iran is not far behind. People are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The economy is on the wagon for a while but who knows when it will take off on another bender. Swine flu is still spreading but we all got side tracked by the American Idol winner. And another kid committed suicide allegedly because he was being bullied. Gas prices are up slightly and Jay Leno will soon be prime time.

I say all that because it seems like we’re on course to compress more and more gravity into more and more sound bites (or video bites) with less and less impact to really change us from within. I mean really, if the media can flood us with enough rapid fire info streaming at 10mbps plus, is it even possible to soak in the depth of meaning behind any of it? When you compress gravity so much, doesn't it turn into a black-hole?

For that matter, even as I type these words my son and a friend are in the family room playing xbox360 at thumb-eye-and-brain speeds that even Evelyn Wood could have never imagined possible. But are they better off for it?

With attention spans shrinking year after year and the gravity of global events getting greater and greater, will the next generation even have time to ponder things like the long term effects of battery powered cars or nuclear weapons small enough to make it into the class room some day?

If all we are is a culture that is texting and sound biting, is there any hope for real relationships and contemplation over the bigger things in life? I wonder?

The days of people getting one or two bits of information regarding a topic and then allowing that info to percolate and assimilate into minds that were taught to think and process with wisdom and foresight may all but be over.

The Value of Stopping

My final thought for the moment, before I fire up the grill is this. Since many parents have ceased using the word “no” or “stop” when they communicate with their little ones, and anything goes and very often does. My concern is a generation that has no understanding of the value of stopping. Go, go, go seems to be the mantra for all too many families today.

Will there be anyone left who simply stops and takes time to listen, to smell, to observe, to wait, to be quiet, to think, to rest? I could go on but I won’t.

Let me close with this. Stop. Rest. Think. Listen. And by all means try not to live on sound bites and Red Bull. Remember man does not live on bread alone, but on EVERY WORD that is vital to life. Not just the blur of ones and zeros that fly through the air as we carelessly go about life. Remember that every word matters. Every event matters. Every person matters. Every second matters.