Speed Of Life

In the technological sense, man zips along like a house ‘a fire. One day you’re bragging about your fancy, hand-chiseled, granite wheel, the next you’re revving up a Ferrari Testarosa. One day you’re thinking the moon is made of green cheese, the next you’re perusing the lunar landscape in a mini-Hummer. Pictographs become photographs become holographs.

We’re a damned witty bunch, our technological evolution astounding. Unfortunately, our maturation rate and emotional development would place third in a race with molasses in January. It’s not that we have bad intentions, it’s simply that we consistently forget that the road to hell is paved with good ones. We’re dandy with doo dads and trinkets, but we’re remedial mindreaders when it comes to dealing with each other.

I’m fascinated by human interaction. Often depressed by it, but fascinated nonetheless. Neighbors get in slug-fests over a quarter inch discrepancy in a property line. Parents go bonkers along the sidelines of the Pee Wee football game. Businesses, particularly those in a small town, nearly always try and badmouth their competition, even though the economic gain from such efforts is largely non-existent. Loving couples, seeming inseparable one week, find themselves cast into the pit of despair the next.

All this over what? When it comes right down to it, we’re pretty much cave people.

It’s sad, really. We are adept at building things, but we function ever so poorly in the maintenance department. Should our toys break, we fix them with the alacrity of a happy banshee on speed. Should our interpersonal or community relationships endure system shutdown, we turn them this way and that, ponder, shed a few tears, and promptly consign them to the heap. It’s not that we don’t want to fix them. It’s just that we never learned how.

Did ya’ll ever think that maybe we’ve got this life thing backwards? Face it, the world is a weird-ass place these days. Racial strife? Absolutely no logical reason for it, but there it is. Third World bloodbaths? You’d think these guys would get tired of butchering each other after a few 1,000 years and move on to Scrabble tournaments. International terrorists . . . well ok . . . I have to admit that I’m onboard with simply whacking them.

Sitting here in my cave, it strikes me that individuals don’t really function that different from countries when it comes to messing up paradise. Maybe, like countries, we are too filled with pride, stubbornness, fear, and self importance to appreciate what we have, or what we could have. Inevitably, we misunderstand, trip over our own tongues, and do just the silliest things. Maybe we are all slow children at heart, stumbling along and repeatedly sticking our hands in the flame, wanting what we want when we want it, without really knowing why we want it.

So, with the exception of the aforementioned terrorists - for whom whacking is way too nice a fate - I can only offer this advice. When it comes to that forgiving and forgetting deal, the latter is far more critical than the former. Protect that which you love and cherish it every second, for without care and consideration it will be gone quicker than you can say World Trade Center. Don’t become apathetic, inconsiderate, or arrogant, for such roads lead to madness, regret, and sorrow. Count to 10 when your angry mind visits the thorny pit, then wait a day and count to 100.

It’s a tough call, attempting to define the human condition. Since nobody has figured it out since roughly the beginning of time, you’ll find no wise and sagacious answers from this quarter. Still, I am consistently boggled that the inhabitants of our little blue ball fail to learn, that we repeat the same mistakes time and again. Over the eons, we’ve come up with zip. Give us a few thousand more eons and I suspect we will still be sitting around scratching our armpits.

Maybe, being mere humans, we fail to foresee the ramifications resulting from behavior that is less than intelligent. Perhaps we are myopic, always looking at the individual parts rather than the whole.

As I said, we humans are good at building things. Unfortunately, we’re even more versed at breaking them. When it comes to affronts against each other, real or perceived, we simply to not have the ability to facilitate repairs. Mushroom clouds are notoriously resistant to recall. Once the damage is done, all one can do is pick through the rubble for cherished memories, momentos and trinkets. Well, you can get real drunk too, but hangovers hurt.

It’s a cryin’ shame, no matter if you’re talking geopolitically, within the confines of the home, or out at the old ball game. I recall an ad campaign from the 70s . . . something to the effect of “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

It’s a great line . . . and I’m sure it sold a lot of soap, or deodorant, or Hai Karate cologne, or something.

But, it’s something most people - or at least those who live in a world saturated with egotism, arrogance, and narcissism - do not even care to learn.