I run with the pessimism of a thousand ghosts on my shoulders. Tonight's run was just a hair over three mile island in about 27 1/2 minutes. After I ran the first mile, I passed my mom's old apartment where she lived away from my father for a year so she could get the schooling and tutelage she needed for her master's certificate. That's a year they'll never get back.
Trashcans line the street because tomorrow is trash day. All of them are neatly and in seemly measured rows. My boss's boss's boss has his can out at the curb, but I can't imagine his dainty hands touching such filth.
Today, I shut down my computer and walked out into the nearly empty waiting area where a "lesser" colleague of mine sat. All the others in my shared office were plugged into the internet, sub-navigation section--facebook. This woman had a slightly smaller screen of which I could distract her from it momentarily.
We chit-chatted casual small talk until I was asked to update a partition of a sub-section on a website of a small college in a poor state of a country loosing ground on the world's stage.
And I was reminded of a story I overheard one coworker said to another coworker in between laughing at memes and online games. "That woman got all mad when her boyfriend pissed her off and so she smashed her phone out in the driveway. And I was like...honey, that's only hurting you."
And I chimed in from my silence like the local nutcase, "maybe it's the one thing she could control? Maybe she just cut off the only way he communicates with her!"
Maybe I'm crazy?
By mile 2 of my run, I wanted to open up a lemonade stand offering friendship instead of capitalizing on cheap beverages. I could see this big cardboard sign in which I would write "Free Friendship," and I would drive it into the ground next to me with a cheap wooden stake.
But the only people who would see me out on the street corner would be the bums and transients. And how would they get along with my rich neighbors and their posh way of life? How would my rich neighbors see me with their heads turned to their TVs?
Mile 3...and I debate whether to tell anyone about these thoughts in my head. I wish I was more hopeful and happy with the world around me. Do other people think of such terrible horrors as often? I live with these things in my head, but do you? Do you think about where we are headed as a species emerging from the cave? I'm only privy to my thoughts and what little I hear between the sparks of interconnected communication I hear online and echoed chatter afterwards.
What world do we live in when I have read more of "your" thoughts online than my wife has spoken to me from her mouth? I don't "want to want" (intentional repetition) to know the superficial charade of thoughts pouring from the digital masses so often. This morning, I was on facebook, scrolled until I was bored, so I mindlessly typed facebook.com in the URL bar to solve my boredom. The Sisyphusian irony was more than I could handle, and another part of me broke inside.
I drove home today thinking about how I would have to take a panoramic photo of my drive home because my view was much wider than it was tall. Above was the blandness of blue skies and below the grayness of concrete. I felt full like someone might who has eaten to much salt. And I craved natural-unmanipulated surroundings like one craves water. I just wanted to see it even if I couldn't be in it right now. I imagined what living in Colorado must be like with the mountains towering over the dread of the city.
I imagine in other people's minds, they go running to escape the day. They may think about losing weight, a project they are working on, becoming more zen...hell, I have probably been all of those people too. But I also think like this, and someone needs to just come out and say it. Get the fuck off your computers for most of the day! I remember a time when using a computer was only a fraction of my day. So if nothing else, keep track of how many hours a week you use a computer or mobile device. Then ask yourself, are you proud of that fact? Is that ever part of a story worth reading? "And then Joe Blow spent 4 hours checking facebook and updating his OKCupid account."
Sounds like a real page turner.
And the terrible irony of me writing this on a computer...
It's not that computers are the devil. Ha! Of which I do not believe in. I just spend my day in a computer lab where students mainly stare at screens. I don't know them when their being human out in the world. My coworkers spend 90% of their time staring at their screens, and sometimes I plead with them to just turn around and talk to me.
Mile 3 complete. What now?
No comments:
Post a Comment