Technology

Random thought of the day....
I woke up thinking to myself how technology has changed in the past few years and how it has accomplished one wonderful gift I wouldn't want to give up, it has given us all the ability to connect with everyone so easily.  I mean just 10 years ago I was not able to speak to my grandmother who lives in Ecuador every week, sometimes I would only be able to speak to her once a month, now thanks to the wonderful gift of technology I can actually talk to her every single day...
My mother who also lives in Ecuador was not able to speak to me or reach me easily, I mean if an email was sent to me just maybe 5 years ago, she would have to wait for me to go ahead and get to my computer and log into my email account and wait for my answer and then she would have to find a computer and do the same... now thanks to the wonderful invention of whats app, she can just send me quick text and there I am (unless I am sleeping, cause then my phone is off and no one can reach me).
Same thing with my cousin, thanks to iMessage and FaceTime we are able to talk to each other at any time without having to pay extreme amounts of money for that one call or texts....
We are all now able to share pictures in an instant with someone else, we are able to share more with others that are not right there with us... But all of this has also come with a big drawback, those that are closer, the ones we spend the most times with and are not too far away, the ones we can personally speak to, they have also gotten so hooked on technology that now a days if you go out with a group of friends everyone is looking down at their phones while also trying to have a conversation with the people that are with them.
Technology not only has allowed us to become closer to those who are far away but it has also made us become more impersonal! So much so that if you were to ever check the minutes used on your cell phone plan you would realize that the unlimited minute plan that you have is just a waste of money because probably you don't use more than 400 minutes a month total... it's kind of sad... then you look at your text message count and it's just an insane amount of texts!!! Lately people even fight over text messaging... which thinking about it today I was like how stupid that is!!! I mean first of all one is typing out one thing and the other person is typing out at the same time and neither really takes a break and both texts get sent out at the same time and then you are trying to read the text that the other person wrote and they are trying to read your text but at the same time neither of you were done typing so then you start typing a new text and neither one of you really gets the point across because there were messages missing or you read the messages so fast that you missed out on something they said that was important to the argument or even the conversation and then it creates a misunderstanding and an even bigger argument....
Or my favorite one... you type out a message and the other person's carrier only send a certain amount of characters and your message is too long so the carriers have to split the message in order for it to actually get to the other person, and then the other person gets like 3 different texts, not in the correct order or vice-versa and you have to figure out what the hell the other person was trying to convey and end up spending more time trying to piece the message back together, which I don't know about you but to me that just frustrates me to no end!!!!
So let's keep this one going... (yes I have a lot to say about this topic, I think I have written a post about my love/hate relationship with technology once) Anyhow, have you ever stopped and thought about how much you have missed because of this wonderful thing called technology? Our insane need to keep in "touch" and to be in constant communication with everyone has made it so that even when you are taking a car ride or a bus ride you are not even looking at whats around you anymore, all you are doing is looking down at your phone and you miss the little things that make life so wonderful! You miss out on the little things that most of us call miracles and the magic that is out there!!!!
How many of us have stopped hearing the birds chirp in the morning? I realized a few days ago that I had forgotten of their existence! the birds are always out there, they are always chirping in the morning, right around 6am they come out and chirp, and what a beautiful sound that is, what a magical moment it is to wake up to that sound, but because I have always been so busy turning on my phone and reading my emails that I have gotten in the middle of the night or after I had turned of my phone and turned in for the night or reading the text messages that were sent to me while the phone was off, reading notifications from all kinds of social media sites and then taking the time to answer them, I had not realize of the existence of those little birds that chirp happily in the morning... I had completely forgotten about them... So then when I realized this I started not checking my phone so quickly, I now get up and hear them chirp, I take a shower, I don't answer anything until I am ready and have eaten and my baby girl is ready to get out the door and I take my damn time even if it means just taking a couple of minutes to contemplate whatever day we are given, whether it is a cloudy day, or a day full of sunshine, but just contemplate it and try to find the beauty in it that always exists....
Is it easy to do? No, it's not, I have to admit that I was at some point addicted to being in constant contact with people, I had to have a conversation with someone and I could not have quiet, but there was a point when it all became overwhelming and I had no idea what was the overwhelming part, today I realized that being in constant communication with the entire world was the overwhelming part.
I realized that while I have gained closeness with some people that are far away and that I miss dearly, I have also become less personal with those that are around me, that I had started to take for granted the company of a friend and a good face to face conversation or just hanging out and watching a movie because everyone else wanted attention all at the same time, so in the end I started to feel like I was missing out more on the little moments... the little memories that I was creating became me behind the camera of my phone taking pictures in order to share every single moment with everyone I wanted to be there and then I realized how much I was missing out on because even though everyone else was not there to see it, I was and all I was doing was seeing it through a damn camera!
Now I know that at some point I might end up falling back into the same old thing and will go back to overwhelming myself by trying to keep up with one too many conversations and trying to capture one too many moments that are best captured in our minds, at the end of it all we are not gonna take the pictures we took with our cameras with us, I would like to think though that the memories we have created with others are the ones that are gonna go through our heads right before the light of life shuts off on us.
And if we want to even be more magical, maybe we go to a place that is all about our good moments, the times we laughed and spent with those we loved, not the times we fought and if all we have is a memory of being in front of a computer or a phone trying to have a philosophical argument or conversation that gets lost at some point because of missing words that we did not get to read or read wrong because we were truly rushing through it... and if you don't believe me, have you ever re-read a conversation you had with someone over text message or an argument after you have had it? I have and it rarely makes any sense... and sometimes there are parts where I go like OMG I totally missed that and my answer made no sense after that...
So anyway... what a wonderful gift and curse technology is, and with the advancement of it I am sure more wonder will come but also I am afraid we are all going to start to become more impersonal to the point where we might not even want to have a face to face conversation anymore because it will be awkward and hopefully that does not really happen but it has already started to happen and I don't think we are fully aware of it, that because it is easier to type out a message and send it, than have that person in front of you and you telling them exactly what you want to say while they see the true expressions of your face, the courage to let another person see the expression on your face while you say important things or even hear the tone of your voice when you are expressing them, we are all losing that courage because the expressions of our faces will never lie, the tone of our voice will never lie, but that can never be express through a text or through an email, you will never be able to get the other person to truly believe how much they mean to you or how angry you really are at the moment, or even the level of sadness or disappointment you are feeling, there are no texts that could possibly ever express true emotion, not even when you use emoticons (which by the way to me they are more of a fun way of trying to convey a message, I always laugh when I use them, just thinking about them makes me smile... hehe)
Alright, I think I have gone on long enough about this, I hope I am not the only one that feels this way, I believe I am not but I then again I could be wrong ;)