Lines In The Sand
By: Samantha Waters
Tags: 1000 Last Goodbyes, Opinion, Samantha Waters, Internet, Politics

Lines In The Sand

I’m only 53 but I’ve saw a few things in my life.

I saw the dust gather on the little black Atari box to make way for the big Donkey Kong arcade at the local dairy Queen.

I watched the excitement of the neighborhood kids gathered around it while having Asteroid contests.

I watched the birth of Xbox, the internet and cell phones.

I watched the cars get smaller while the pricetags got bigger.

I saw houses get bigger while families got smaller. I watched parents work more & more hours while kids did more activities.

I watched the same 24 hours on the clock yet I saw time dwindling.

I saw exhausted frustrated parents at the end of the day with nothing left to give to the most important people in their life.

Work harder to have nicer things only to have less time to enjoy it.

In spite of this diminished time I saw peoples energy going into things far away from them even while they were at home.

The distraction seemed legit.

It seemed easier to have an opinion on other people’s lives than what might be happening behind the scenes of theirs.

It became the norm, even brazen, to boast about the ridiculousness of something you only heard 3 minutes of information about. It seemed obvious that you would have done things differently had you been over there …. Plus you had expert opinions to guide you through the gaps in your ‘knowledge’.

By the end of the hour, you, the expert & the newscaster had it all cut & dried. Your solution to the dilemma was of course the “right and only way to do the thing best for all involved..I mean, jeeshhhh! It’s a no brainer, can’t you see that?”

Onto the next thing…

Your world in 60 seconds became a well known household slogan.

After all this WAS your world out there.. right?

You HAD to care.. less SOMEone might do SOMEthing that might affect YOU if you didn’t insert your expert opinion..

Everyone knows that….

Don’t they?

Rapid technology has brought us millions of daily data to sort through. It became harder to stay neutral and let it pass. The social networking kings have now admitted how they hooked us…

Hook line & sinker with bursts of dopamine day after day. We couldn’t wait until the next hit of ego- filled satisfaction.

Family time, instead, became hours of internet searching, arguing, reading, playing silly games and surveys WITH STRANGERS, Not the people in front of us. Or- rather: the strangers spread out in all the rooms of our bigger homes.

Many a study has been done on the effects of the internet; but here we are now- 2020- with a major major dilemma.

Before – we could have walked away & not had it affect us …. But NOW we can’t.

We are in too deep.

WE MUST CHOOSE A SIDE…

We must prove we are right & justified in our opinion. We look for evidence to back our claims. And we find it!!!

Social media has shown us how they served it up on a platter to us.

And now they’re taking it away. Suddenly it’s not ok to be us….. Suddenly we MuST think like our friends or our family or our co- worker’s or we are the stupid idiot who has a profile picture that CLEARLY shows what an inbecile we are.

Suddenly we are served limited information according to some obscure fact checker in some random basement ..

Yes I’ve lived half a century but I’ve never seen the intolerance and sheer derogatory venom that comes out of people’s keyboards.

And no.

It’s NOT ANYONE’S fault.

Yes the media can reward us with more of what we want, and we can feel like we’re part of some elite club, but at the end of the day, it’s US, OURSELVES & I that are responsible for Our words & actions.

AT the end of the day what matters?

CNN isn’t gonna be on your death bed, zuckerberg won’t send flowers.

Jim Blow in Yimbucktwo isn’t going to suddenly apologize and say “Hey man, you were right- sorry about giving you crap online”

Nope, at the end of the day, at the end of our life, WE are the ones who have to answer to & also feel good about our own energy and the vibes we spread…

WE ARE responsible for the seeds we plant to leave our very own legacy.

What seeds WILL YOU plant? What WILL people remember you for?

We all know the story of The Dash.

That little line between your birth years and the year you died. But what about the end …what will your legacy be to those who knew you?