Jane, Age 70
I just spent a dozen hours trying to catch up with my technological devices. Upgraded my iPad to a new OS at the Apple store, learned aspects of a non-intuitive health services encoding program at work, worked on blog programming and production. Remembered to charge up phone, Kindle, iPad…Yikes!
The digital world pulls us forward, in spite of our resistance. Our generation is precariously sandwiched between most of the World War II “greatest” seniors who refuse to have anything to do with the complications of the internet, and the boomers behind us who embrace everything electronic and ether-based.
We’ve witnessed an incredible swath of this evolution, as technological change has run apace. Successive generations of devices both amaze and unnerve us, with alterations in ways to gather news, read books, record ideas, contact friends and listen to music.
Each week, I scan the ads of the local mega electronics store, just to see what new devices exist, and what they’re called. Items proliferate weekly, with sometimes mysterious uses or applications, while flea markets and antique fairs display our long beloved sewing machines, desk phones, typewriters, vinyl records and radio consoles.
It won’t be long, it seems, before all screens merge into a single receptor for TV, movies, videos, music, photos, books, phone calls, social networking, web searching, world mapping and apping. Wait a minute…Has it already happened?? Can we keep up with this pace?
That’s a smart way of thinking about it.
Same here: How do you keep it all together, when all you can do is cry? What words are ever appropriate, for expressing such a sad goodbye? How does one continue, with a life of shattered dreams? You never know if you’ve got it in you. Until it falls apart at the seams. When you feel the magnitude, of that fateful blow, within. You find out in a moment, if you’ve got the will to win. Will you survive through the pain? No matter what the cost, or give in to the hurt. And die with what you’ve lost? It’s never going to be easy. At times you’ll wish to die. But these times are the turning point, If only, you choose to survive. The sadness will overcome you. It will seem too much to bear. But remember, through the loneliness. there are those who care. If not a mother or a father, then, a brother or a friend. Or seek the comfort of a lover or the solitude within. Whatever makes you wake each day, even through the sorrow. Will help you make it through the night, and see another tomorrow. I have no platitudes to offer, I cannot bear your load. But, I offer my strength to hold you up, On this long and painful road. The key to making it through this time. Is remembering your life, not to dread. But look at each day, like your very last. And live today, not the days ahead. If you can survive through the nights. And I promise they’ll seem longer. Each day which does not destroy you. Will only make you stronger.