Can anyone remember the 80’s?  Yes there were big hair bands, skating rings, mall hair, & no Internet.  How did we ever live?  These were the days when people actually communicated with people face to face.  It never crossed our minds that we would want to call someone while we where driving, but in hindsight they were such archaic days.  We were all bound by landlines and worst of all we were deprived of the play by play, minute by minute action or lack there of, of seeing our friends lives on Facebook.

 

The invention of the Internet started us on the fast track to getting information fast, whenever we want it; all we have to do is click on Wikipedia.  We’ve become addicted to knowing large amounts of useless information, just because we can.

 

I ashamed to ask this question, because I know I am just as guilty as the next person.  How self-absorbed have we become?  We have our Facebook account, our I-phones, blogs, personal ringtones, our own video on YouTube, and the list goes on and on and on.  We can be a superstar in the world of screens, in fact it seems like our world is made of nothing but screens. 

 

Don’t get me wrong I love all these great technologies.  I’m just thinking out loud here, that we are changing the way we see ourselves: as a twitter, AIM, text-messaging, HTML bodies, and if we don’t like something about ourselves all we have to do is cut, paste, copy, or delete ourselves into who we want to be.  Then just post it on e-harmony. 

 

We’ve become obsessed with community driven “status”.  The communication we have become so passionate about is what we are doing right now whither it’s interesting or not.  We no longer want to communicate to learn from others or hear about a persons unique experiences, instead it’s about how they are feeling and what type of coffee they are going to get once they get to Starbucks. 

 

Have are lives become that important that everyone in the world needs to know about it?  Or is it that we have become so isolated from one another that we desperately long to have meaningful relationships – that we will just take a cheap (or not so cheap) substitute relationship with a screen. 

 

This generation that we find our self in seems empty and lonely at times.  We long to get into some of the action, love, and adventure we see in the movies, television shows, and video games.  The media tells us life is an adventure and only a few people that are pretty enough, lucky enough, or rich enough get to experience this type of life.  But that’s just not true we all can experience a life like this all we have to do is turn off the screen and actually do life! We need a life that is filled with meaning and purpose.

 

Our generation has become exhausted by consumerism and sadly it is all we know.  There are some people in this generation though that see this and are getting out there to be different.  They are tired of just taking from our culture and wanting to give something back no matter how small it may be. 

 

These wonderful technologies such as blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and the rest – suddenly give us platforms to say something meaningful, life changing even and people are listening.  Millions of people listening to what we have to say, we have a chance to actually make a difference in peoples lives.  Let’s not just use these outlets for the norm mind numbing crap that so many are already putting out there.  Let’s stop trying to feel important, validated, and interesting, because let’s face it do your friends really care that you are watching Survivor, while typing on your hip trendy pink MacBook. 

 

Life was meant to live and I don’t know about you but looking at a screen all the time is not really living to me.  Instead let’s get out there in the world and experience what God has made for us and maybe along the way we might find a worthy cause to be a voice for – an injustice’s that we want to take a stand against. Wouldn’t that be crazy to actually do what God has created us to do!