Seeking Simplicity

12.21.06



The insanity of this culture washed over me as we arrived in the Las Vegas airport on the way to our family visit in Arkansas. Slot machines bleeped and purred, Minority Report-like plasma screen posters on the wall used CGI to promote magazine covers while TV monitors bombarded us with news. I couldn’t hear my husband 3 feet away from me and found myself just tuning out to everything in an effort to find some peace inside my head. Now, on the airplane the kids thumb through Skymall magazine, mini-consumers in training and Noah points out an air gun that shoots marhsmallows. I try to contain my dismay at yet another example of our ability to combine food wastage with weaponry but get side-tracked by another item for sale, the Automatic Breakfast Cereal Dispenser for only $79.99! With this handy dandy piece of battery run tom foolery “fixing the days first meal will never again be a messy, time consuming chore.” It’s a “healthy gift for the whole family,” as “controlled portions also keep the pounds off.” My jaw drops in a state of dis-belief at the audacity of this ridiculous device. Have people no idea how to use a measuring cup!????!!!!

Yet, while I decry this technological madness, what relieves me of the tension it generates is my very own piece of it: my Mac and I-tunes playing Bach’s Cello Concertos as a distraction. So where does the continuum of technological appropriateness cross the line from time or space saving to the sheer obscenity of the ABC Dispenser? Why is my mini-van any less offensive than a Hummer if I could be driving a Mini-Cooper? How do we live in this culture and hold on to our values as the temptations to make life simpler with all our available gadjetry keep pulling at us like the vendors in a Moroccan souk? Email saves us a trip the post-office; voice-mail the hand wrenching labor of penning a note to someone; IM-ing eliminates the struggle to pick up a phone and speak to someone; text-messaging avoids the effort of completing a whole sentence or capitalizing letters.

All our inventions are aimed at making life simpler or safer, yet do they make us happier? The kids have just as much fun on a rusty swing in Mexico as the ergonomically designed, plastic textured one in Beverly Hills. I get to my destination just as quickly in a high tech hybrid as a 20 year old Volvo. My coffee tastes exactly the same whether I use the latest Bose speaker enhanced Morning Brew Automatic Alarm system as a French Press. There are still 24 hours in a day, whether I mark them on a Patek Philippe or my trusty Timex.

Our houses fill with stuff. We re-gift at Christmas, passing around the proverbial fruit cake that no one really wants. We chase the latest plasma whatever it is, but the story being broadcast hasn’t changed. Hanah sits here patiently waiting for me to finish my “memoir-ies” so she can play with my photo booth, but has as much fun with a mirror. There’s a magazine called Simple that hawks yet more “things” to help stream-line your life. Something's wrong with this picture. Where do we find the quiet, the time, the space to rest, to create and contemplate? Isn't there a way to take the box of cereal from the cabinet and pour it in our appropriately sized bowl without passing it through an $80 contribution to the plastic landfill of the future?

We arrive at a re-furbished Howard Johnsons complete with cable and wireless so the kids and mom have their technologies at hand. I sigh and settle in, accepting that what allows me to rant here is the very thing I rant about: progress. All this "stuff" is just the fruit of our never ending quest to keep telling stories, stay connected and communicate in an every busy, noise filled world. I will just try harder to find the beauty in a day, to ignore the glaring neon signs and locate a simple flower, a perfect 5th, the scent of pine on a wet winter day.