What Happened?

Last night Bruce and I were watching TV when the new Pepsi commercial came on and it was showing Pepsi throughout the generations and what was going on at a particular time. Bruce asked me if I could go back to a point in time, what era would I live in. At the time I thought why would I live anytime but now, we have the best technology, we can travel anywhere, we know what's going on halfway across the globe when it happens, there's funny tv, awesome movies...the list goes on.

Today, I have a different answer. I came to a realization that people are different, times are different, things are complicated. In this day and age, it seems we have too much of everything and not enough of something. What's that something?

I think people have forgotten manners, people have stopped paying attention to details, people shrug things off as mistakes or think that things don't matter. Life is moving too fast...we're always rushing to get to the next thing. We need to slow down. We need to look back a couple generations and analyze what was good about those times and see if they've passed into this time. I'm betting a lot of things haven't.

Growing up, my mom taught me to write thank you letters for gifts that I had received. Growing up, my teachers taught me to check for spelling errors because it was important that anything I wrote was as perfect as I was capable of making it - people take you more seriously then. You shouldn't rely on spell check. Take the time to make sure things are the best you can make them. People appreciate that. Sometimes I think if we didn't have all the computer technology or even cable, we'd spend more time together and maybe get to know each other better. Maybe if there weren't restaurants on every corner, we'd eat at home more often with our families. Maybe if we didn't have cell phones there'd be less accidents. What happened to reading a book? Now we listen to them in the car as we rush off to the next thing. What happened?