"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Well, Ferris is actually quite true with these two statements with not much further explanation. Today, I went to the city mall with one of my close friends. She had never been there before so we decided to walk around. Then, the truly unusual and unexpected happened.
The mall's fire alarms all went off. What do we do? What should we do? We walked and observed through shocked, squinted eyes how no one seemed to care let alone notice what was going on. Mall employees and customers continued about their business. No one looked startled or even concerned that this obnoxious, flashy light was blaring all around them. It was as if we were the only ones hearing this sound and the flashing lights. Why wasn't anyone running?
We joked about how we might be in the Twilight Zone, where we might actually be the ones who could hear this sound.
This non-life threatening emergency made us wonder how ironic this non emergency may have been if it was an actual emergency. How could people just continue looking down at their phones finger scrolling their lives away when something serious could be happening right in front of them. We figured these types of nonobservant and apathetic people were also the kind of people who looks at their phone while hanging out with their best friends or during an intimate dinner date. They are the people who get overdramatic at global tragedies or even national terrorist disasters when they are on television.
I find these types of people ironic. I am not saying that these people are the scum of the earth, but seriously a fire alarm! I mean will it kill you to have a little social commentary and interaction with another person than letting your reality escape into calming blues and the blaring white light getting sucked in by your irises. Take a look around at this world because you might actually miss something real. Something magical if you just let them absorb into our brain.
On the way home, I waited at a cross walk with two strangers. A woman walking her dog and a man with a suitcase. I couldn't quite believe my eyes at first, but I took a step back and saw one of the most absurdest things I have ever seen. This man was on a mini Segway and wheeling his suitcase all while finger scrolling his life away. This woman was so enamored by this, she asked him a series of questions like how do you balance? That must come in handy!
The absolute kicker was her asking this man (I presumed going to the airport) was going. He answered her, still with his head swallowed by the white light of his phone: "the laundromat." I was so flabbergasted and disgusted that this man cannot have the slightest desire to be part of this world we live that he needs to get places faster because his golf buddy's latest post on his newsfeed is definitely more important than pressing the crosswalk button.
Our world has been so wrapped and brainwashed by these supposedly more social "social networks" claiming to connect us with our loved ones. Their lives has become more about world they see on the screen than the world around them. These networks don't have me wrapped around their finger. Maybe it was how I was raised or maybe it was because all this technology didn't quite exist to the extent it is today.
I got my first phone in my junior year of high school and still have it six years later! I am not one to update my phone every time there is an upgrade. I am not one to download the latest apps because they are trending. I am not one to be on social media to tell the world of how I am feeling or what I am doing.
I don't regularly tweet because that should be reserved for the birds.
When MySpace was popular I didn't think "my space" needed to be in front of a Dell computer screen while there was bike rides and neighborhood walks around the lake to be had instead. My space was more often in a book's reality trapping me in their world for a while yet I knew how to cut myself off from fighting knights and have a break for dinner.
And dating has become so superficial about how we have to judge everything about them from a mini bio and a series of pictures before swiping. When did dating have to be based on looks; instead of who the person is on the inside? Again, I am not bashing anyone for doing any of these things but we need to experience this world more because we are only on this planet for so long.
Do you really want to remember your life always looking down? What if I told you reading this article will make you rethink your life starting from the moment you started scrolling down this page?
Isn't it ironic?
