Sometimes I feel a bit like Oprah overloaded us. She gave us gratitude journals, and had spiritual advisers as guests, and sometimes I wanted to say, "Enough, already."
I think some of that may stem from her desire to help others finally get to a point where we appreciate what we have. And while she seemed like a rich sultan of daytime by comparison to the rest of us, I'm not sure we always appreciate how amazing things really are.
Earlier today, I had been on Facebook, and had been posting when all of a sudden my internet connection failed. And I tried to connect and still kept failing. So I bopped to the room next door, got my brother to check it out, and sure enough it was just the router needing a reboot. But for a brief moment, I didn't need to fire up the Delorean to 88mph in order to go back in time. I remember having my break between classes and band, and slogging to the portable annex building in the middle of a rainstorm in Big Sandy, Texas. I walk into the computer lab which has about a dozen PCs, a half dozen Macs, and a white board at the front of the room. If you wanted to check email, you would glance at that front board, for if there was an up arrow, all was good. If the arrow was down, there was no internet. While our fledgling IT department working with new technology out in the sticks of East Texas, the internet was just that much of a fickle friend.
Yet now, look at me. I can sit down and launch a browser. I can get the news of the day, talk in real time with friends literally across the world in far away places like Spain and South Africa.
On a daily basis I have at least one device that can take pictures, a phone, something I can record lists on and play goofy games on. I can carry videos in my pocket.
It is amazing. Simply amazing. Rather than being annoyed when our amazing devices and amazing things don't perform as quickly as we'd like, or things don',t go as smoothly as we're accustomed, if we could just take a minute to realize how utterly amazing everything is.
This is why I love this segment from Conan O'Brien featuring Louis C.K. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be forced to go back to an era of donkeys and pans clanging in order to appreciate what we've got right here and now. I want to realize and appreciate just how amazing everything is, and be happy with it without having to lose it all.
If you can bear with the 8 minutes, I think it is one of the best and most relevant comedy routines of all time. Enjoy.
"Everything is amazing and nobody is happy" by Meowbay
I think being unhappy is usually what drives us forward. It's what makes people want to invent a better mouse trap. Ultimately, the things that make us happy have never really changed. Give us some food, shelter, companionship, and a little purpose and we would be willing to deal with almost anything else.
ReplyDelete