Just add water

We live in a “just add water” society. We want the quick and easy. We have no time it seems to sit under the cork tree and smell the flowers like Ferdinand. It’s too bad because we don’t know what we’re missing out on.

For example…

Cell phones… a very useful tool, but at what cost? I remember back even in high school calling friends from your home phone (having a cordless was a luxury by the way) to arrange a time to meet. You had to trust that they were going to be where they said they’d be. More often than not, they would be there early or on time because you didn’t want to leave the other person hanging. Now-a-days, you show up late after you send them a text to the fact. The person on the other end was counting on them being late anyway and planned accordingly. Maybe that’s why we need all these conveniences in life (cell phones, instant coffee, fast food, etc.) because we just don’t have time since we’re constantly playing catch up. But maybe these conveniences in life are the reasons why we’re constantly behind.

We also lose face-to-face time. Who needs to meet when you can pick up your cell and call that person? It’s even worse now with texting. Who needs to actually hear that person’s voice when you can send a text? Just when you think we couldn’t get more detached, it has. Why text when you can see their tweet or status update? Pretty soon will have surrogates (like the movie with Bruce Willis) doing things for us.

What worries me is this is how are kids grow up. Jake was shocked when he found out we didn’t have cell phones growing up. He couldn’t even imagine what life must have been like. It was great to be honest. I didn’t have a PS3 or Wii like he does to distract me. I had to go outside and throw a tennis ball against the stairs for three hours to work on fielding ground balls. I had to go shoot some hoops to work on my jumper. I rode my bike all day long and got some exercise. It’s no wonder obesity in children is becoming a bigger epidemic.

Television… it’s prolly worse than crack. With unlimited channels to watch, anyone can find anything at any time (On Demand). I had five channels growing up. Sometimes we had to add tinfoil to the bunny ears to get better reception. Now it’s in High-Definition. Why pay $150 to go to the game when you can get better angles and cheaper food from the comfort of your own home? But you can’t duplicate the energy of a crowd, see the receiver breaking free from the secondary, get the sudden rush from a nearby foul ball… you can’t replicate these things even if 3D is the new thing. I am predicting one day that television will be 3D holograms. It’ll be something you lay down on a flat surface that projects an image upwards like something out of Star Wars. You can forget about ever going to a game when that happens and the PS6 will have some pretty tight games.

I don’t want my kids to be reliant on technology to do things and think for them. But it’s not their fault. I enjoy these conveniences too because maybe I feel I had a harder upbringing that required more imagination and now I can just switch to auto-pilot. Doesn’t sound like living to me.

It’s not just technology, it’s everything in life where we can take a shortcut. Yes, it’s more convenient and easier, but there is something about learning how to do it… getting your hands dirty. All these things that are meant to make our life easier have drawn us further and further from the true experience. We’re getting the condensed version and pretty soon we trick ourselves into thinking that it’s the original.

My kids love pancakes. Because my wife and I are lazy, we buy the “just add water” mix. They’re not awful and my kids like them, but this weekend when I opted for the buttermilk version that required eggs and milk, I couldn’t believe how much better they tasted. Jake said they were better than Perkins. Better than Perkins! It took all but 1 egg and ¾ cup of milk to make that experience 100 times more enjoyable. Not everything is going to be this easy to get better results, but I can tell you that what you get out of it will so much more meaningful.

I am not saying throw away your cell phones and go back to the black and white television, but if you have a choice, choose the one that is more difficult and you’ll be better for it. I promise you this, I’ll never “just add water” again.