A Kaleidoscope World
When we were children, we would find delight in playing with a kaleidoscope. We would put our eye to the opening at one end and turn the tumbler on the other end. With every turn, we would experience a new and completely different pattern of reds and blues and myriad other colors and shapes. After awhile, we would grow tired of playing with the kaleidoscope and put it away.
Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing and turn off the barrage of images and sounds I see and hear at every turn. Ours is a noisy and disorienting world, with fewer and fewer places where it is quiet and serene. It becomes increasing ly difficult to tune out the din of life in the 21st century world. But unlike a kaleidoscope, we cannot set it aside even for a short time. The world will find us wherever we are. On the street, in our homes, in our cars as we drive to work or at work, the visual and audio noise of the world follows us relentlessly.
As I go about my very frenetic days, I may not even consciously notice the sights and sounds all about me. But my eyes and ears are absorbing every image, every commercial, every song, every billboard... every distraction that screams out to me, "Look at me! Hear me! Buy this or buy that!" And little by little, the bits and pieces of sight and sound begin to form an ever changing montage as I move from moment to moment. I may not remember the sign or the song or the television show blaring from the flat screen tv. But inexorably I have been changed and reshaped into someone other than the person I was before. One day, when I will wake up and think a totally random thought that is not something I would normally think, I will have no idea at all where it came from. Somewhere along the way, one of those ever changing impressions I saw or heard found a small unused corner of my brain and took it as its residence, and, as they say, the rest is history.
What should I make of all this? I am not sure at all. But I kn0w that I have been changed by our frantic world. What do I do about what is happening to me? I don't know that I can really do anything at all to change the situation. I am too much of person who loves to be with and around other people. I cannot simply flee from the world and hide in some cave at the top of a mountain or on an isolated island. I guess that this phenomenum is just one of those things in our frantic world that you and I just have to live with as best we can.
Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing and turn off the barrage of images and sounds I see and hear at every turn. Ours is a noisy and disorienting world, with fewer and fewer places where it is quiet and serene. It becomes increasing ly difficult to tune out the din of life in the 21st century world. But unlike a kaleidoscope, we cannot set it aside even for a short time. The world will find us wherever we are. On the street, in our homes, in our cars as we drive to work or at work, the visual and audio noise of the world follows us relentlessly.
As I go about my very frenetic days, I may not even consciously notice the sights and sounds all about me. But my eyes and ears are absorbing every image, every commercial, every song, every billboard... every distraction that screams out to me, "Look at me! Hear me! Buy this or buy that!" And little by little, the bits and pieces of sight and sound begin to form an ever changing montage as I move from moment to moment. I may not remember the sign or the song or the television show blaring from the flat screen tv. But inexorably I have been changed and reshaped into someone other than the person I was before. One day, when I will wake up and think a totally random thought that is not something I would normally think, I will have no idea at all where it came from. Somewhere along the way, one of those ever changing impressions I saw or heard found a small unused corner of my brain and took it as its residence, and, as they say, the rest is history.
What should I make of all this? I am not sure at all. But I kn0w that I have been changed by our frantic world. What do I do about what is happening to me? I don't know that I can really do anything at all to change the situation. I am too much of person who loves to be with and around other people. I cannot simply flee from the world and hide in some cave at the top of a mountain or on an isolated island. I guess that this phenomenum is just one of those things in our frantic world that you and I just have to live with as best we can.
posted by hfireman | 11:04 PM
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