Solitude is getting harder to come by. Our lives are so complicated that we have less time for quiet contemplation than we used to have. The major culprit in our noise-invaded lives is the cellular phone.No doubt it is one of the greatest innovations in the last 20 years, but can't we live without it for five minutes? I see more people doing mindless babbling than anything, and I wonder how empty our lives were before we had such a thing? We seem to be so attached to these devices that they are invading activities that used to be done in peaceful silence.
I see cell phones at the gym, the library, movies, concerts and of course, the automobile. Do we really need to be constantly talking to someone? The thing I hear from most people is a kind of babbling nonsense. One end of the conversation would go like this: "really ... yeah ... uh-huh ... sure ... OK ... OK ... well ... see ya." Boy, it doesn't get much more stimulating that that, does it? Mostly it seems like people are using the phone for the sake of using it.
Don't you just want to be alone with your thoughts for five minutes, or is that too frightening a concept to imagine?
Whatever did we do before these things existed? Does anyone remember long lines at pay phones full of people just dying to talk to someone? I don't, and I suspect that if we didn't have cell phones the world would not necessarily be worse than it is now.
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Corn is easy, but knowing the right time to bale hay in Kansas . . . titillating information.
Teaching in a high school, I see cell phones on a daily, if not hourly basis. Parents have actually called their child while they were in class! I can't imagine what anyone has to say to anyone else that it couldn't wait until one got home to the privacy of their living room. Nor do I want to be privy to the conversations I've overheard. My students cannot believe that I do not own a cell phone. So far, I've managed to stave off the seemingly impending purchase.
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