THREE THINGS I MISS

Today’s topic: What are three things I miss?   I must admit this took a great deal of thought.

INNOCENCE: At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, I miss the innocence of life. I miss more simplistic times.   I actually miss the world where television stations weren’t on 24 hours a day. I remember when television stations would sign off at night and back on the next morning.   I still can’t force myself to believe that there is a need for news 24 hours a day.  There is only so much that can be reported, and it doesn’t have to be updated every three minutes.   I miss a time when we didn’t have hour-long shows on television dedicated to dissecting court cases with raving Nancy Graces everywhere with their sensationalizing of cases, missing people and murders.  There was a simple innocence in a not-so-far-away world where we didn’t need that.  Don’t get me wrong, I love facebook, text messages and email and the connection they provide.  I even still enjoy watching the news, and I like to be able to get updates on breaking news online.   But, I miss the simple innocence and beauty of a handwritten letter, watching a simple 30 minute newscast by people to whom we all felt a connection.  

PEOPLE:  I miss the people who have all had a hand in molding me into the man I’ve become.  There are some people with whom I’ve just lost touch, which is ok because some people are only meant to be in our lives for a season, some have passed from this life, and some just simply live farther away. 

EMOTION: There are times when I want to just sit down and cry.  I believe it is healthy.  However, for whatever reason, I have not had a good cry in far longer than I can remember. I imagine that one day when the floodgates to my tears are opened, they may go for days.  Whoever came up with the philosophy that “real men don’t cry” was, and, I’ll put it bluntly, a damned liar.   I imagine there are men who lived lives much shorter than they should have because they were taught to not express their emotions.   A good cry is cleansing for the soul.  Yet, for me, my emotions are expressed in my writing until the day the dam breaks on my tears.

Here’s my confession:   As I prepared to write this blog, it really struck me as a surprisingly much harder topic than I had expected.   I didn’t want to be superficial in the topics I covered.   I wanted to be honest and heartfelt, as always.   What I miss most is the simplicity of life and the people as I was growing up.   I often try to think of things from the perspective of my parents or grandparents and wonder if when I was growing up in the 1980s was really a much easier time than it is now or if, because my only job then was to be a kid, that my perception is that life was easier then?  And so, I will leave you with these thoughts: Does the advent of technology make our lives easier or does it convolute our lives more? In being more connected to the world, are we actually less connected? Is knowledge really power, or is it possible to know too much about what is going on in our world?