Information age

Silence is passion of the heart, quiet is a vital need for the mind, serenity is medicine for the soul, solitude is a necessity for sanity, peace of mind is the lifeblood of spirit which regenerates us– or remind us as to what is important, yet it is found in such few places. Slowing down is “a good thing” –as Martha Steward would say, taking it easy elongates our life span, by increasing the length of our telomeres, which are distinctive structures, like caps, at the end of our chromosomes; thus we can even slow down aging. Praying, meditating, chanting mantras seem such simple things-to relax and re-energize the vital force, but these days it is hardly possible to practice these methods in the city-so it seems to me, even out in the country.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe many can.  Life seems crazy, hectic-and it is certainly a mad, mad world out there which was demonstrated to me today as I lived it in the form of a trip downtown. The heat, the bumper to bumper traffic, the road constructions, the noise, the pollution and time wasted in driving for hours brought me to realization that city life is not for me, probably life is not- I have outgrown it. The fast pace is toxic to the body mind and spirit in everyway.  A very high price to pay for one`s sanity.

I looked at the people in the cars-almost all were talking - hands free ofcourse, as there is a huge fine for using a hand held device-. The one`s walking seemed to be in a hurry-rushing to God knows where,  while most of them were either texting or- “massaging their phone” as a friend of mine likes to describe it or they too were talking on the phone. I wondered what do these people text  or talk  about all the time. They all seemed like zombies to me, seemingly unaware of  their surroundings totally- walking along the concrete pavement, with the concrete structures  looming high above them; even oxygen seemed to be sucked out of those narrow streets. Even the CN Tower was reaching for the sky for a breath of fresh air.

Welcome to the enlightened age – the 21^st century of cyberspace, junkies of different stripes and colours- and prisoners of our demented poisoned environment; of fast foods, speed dating  and traumatized kids with ADD and ADHD drugged to the hilt, with gender identity problems at age 7 instead of playing  and being kids. Time is a precious commodity even to a first grader whose time is scheduled to the minute as they rush from one activity to an other.

The news is filled with horror stories- of mass shootings daily, crime, murder, bombings and terrorist activities. Planes falling out of the sky, the police underfire-and fear is everywhere. We just stare at the little screen as people demonstrate, the dead are simply statistics as we have become numbed to the visions of death; war is everywhere- all Obama can do is cry.   

We are overfed, undernourished and need some pill to get us through the day and night. We are depressed, obsessed with looks, workouts and material gains. We have lost God in the shuffle. The bookstore shelves are filled with self help books from all the experts on how to live, and how to die  and a whole spectrum of stuff that you can dream up in between-that our grandparents knew instinctively- now we need a text book to guide us.

 This is the  time –where people interact on FB, face-time, Skype, twitter, instagram, snap-chat, e-mail, text and other new modes and methods quite unfamiliar to me. Social life of our culture depends on how many people you have “be-friended”  on FB, though you know very few  personally, and how may “likes ”you get which makes  you feel special and a million bucks- and everybody`s figure of speech is “I love you”-which just sounds good. Tweeting is not made by a  bird neither is gay being happy- even words have different meanings in this new age. There are myriads of souls who have absolutely no personal physical contact except through some device with each other.

We are stressed beyond imagination-our senses are stretched out like an elastic band that could snap any moment as we are being bombarded left, right and center with information that is unimportant in the long run and we are filled with all kinds of mental, physical and psychological ailments created by the “information age” – that we profess to be “just wonderful”. We are angry at everything, and at everyone, hate the system, fed up with politicians-we clinging to the faint hope that maybe, just maybe the next president or prime minister will get us out of the hell-hole. Frustrated and hopeless at our incapability of handling our lives as it spins out of control. We have lost our innocence, we have lost our connections to nature, we have lost balance, we have lost our connections to each other-and we are killing ourselves, killing each other and killing our planet-.  No, black lives don`t matter, white lives don`t matter-all lives matter.