A couple of months ago I wrote about the episode at the Drew University library in which I shocked two twenty-year-old students with the revelation that I had been a student there before there was email. I made them apoplectic by telling them that the internet was just being invented. They looked at me in shock (and awe?) and, I believe, looked out the window, searching for my dinosaur. And I didn’t tell them that I was there for graduate school, not undergraduate. That would have sent them crying to their mommy and daddy who, by the way, have parents my age. Time passes us all, and there’s no looking back.
I heard a comedian telling a story about people his age being between two eras. He said he had to explain to some people younger than he is that he remembered when Google did not exist. Search engines are such an integral part of our daily lives that it is easy to forget just how new they are. The comedian explained that if he wanted to know something, he would have to go to the library and ask a smart person there where the books about said subject were. Then he would have to walk up the stairs, find the section, bend down low to the floor in the dark ready to pass out with all the blood rushing to his head, and find the combination of letters and numbers that matched the book he found on the card in the drawer of the wooden cabinet in the middle of the entryway. He would then grab that book – and others like it – sit down at an ancient wooden table, and look in the indexes and find the subject, flip to those pages (careful not to rip them) and find out the information he so dearly coveted. Then he would know who won the batting title in the National League in 1952. A lot of work. It was worth it, though, to show off how smart he was to his friends at the bar.
I told the two college students at Drew U. that someday, when they were my age, they would have a similar conversation with two twenty-year-olds at the same desk, and they would have to explain what Google was to them, since it would probably have been replaced by something faster and vaster. Because time passes us all. And I don’t worry if I don’t know how to use some new technology; if the person I ask for help laughs, I ask them if they know how to use a rotary phone or a stick shift. The look of confusion on their face is priceless. It doesn’t matter how old or young we are – what matters is if we embrace life and love and learning and are able to laugh at ourselves and the world around us. We are all on this earth for a limited time, and if we live in the past, we will miss the best things in life. The passage of time is a victory, not a defeat. Don’t miss it.
Prayer – Holy God, You created us as mortals who have a limited time on earth. May our lives embrace every moment, and may we savor every breath. Amen.
Today’s art is “Joyful Living” by Fleur Barnfather.