No Time

I was going to weigh in on the NY Post and that foul ass comic they ran in their paper but truthfully there are bloggers who are far more articulate than me who are already on the case. I will just say though that for all those who felt we are living in post-racial America….um, no we are not. In fact we are a long way from being post racial in any meaningful way and I suspect we will see more rank ass shit like this in the coming days.

Anyway on to the rant of the day. Today on Facebook a few folks posted a link to a column that I guess ran recently in a paper, it was a question and answer type deal. The question being asked was how come so many mothers of kids claim to never have time to stay in touch, instead saying their kids keep them too busy to stay connected to friends. As you can imagine quite a few folks got upset after all it seemed asĀ if perhaps stay at home mothers were being judged.

Now I don’t care to fixate on the particulars of that column, but I will say that in recent years as technology has evolved I have noticed the growing tendency for folks to be too busy to call or return a friend’s call. I will admit in the first year of my daughter’s birth, I was tired quite a bit and therefore selective about who I gave my time to. However I made time for folks who matter to me. Let me repeat that, I made time for folks who matter.

My father who is 1100 miles away from and I have a standing time on the weekends that we call one another, some weekends we don’t talk but for the most part we always touch base even if its simply to leave a message. Now I must admit I try to connect with my brother on the regular but that cat stays busy, thankfully we do seem to stay in touch via Facebook.

I found myself thinking how sad it is that so many of us have cell phones, smartphones, internet, etc yet we are so busy that we have to struggle to make time to talk to a friend. Back in the early 1990’s when I was a single working Mama, I always had time to at least say hello and stay connected and this was before the day of 24/7 communications.

No, I think our lack of ability or desire to stay connected to folks we supposedly care about on some level speaks volumes about where we have been this past decade…stuck on a treadmill striving for more and better, yet never reaching the promised land. Instead we amass our items but have little connection to those around us. Several pieces have been written in recent years about how Americans by and large have become a lonely bunch, we no longer participate in community in any meaningful way.

I suppose the life path we have chosen in the last decade is starting to catch up with many of us as we face the new reality of a scaled down life…a life that will no longer involve work and perhaps worshipping at the altar of consumerism yet for many of us we will be at a loss of how to connect with others in a meaningful way.

Yes, we have the internet and we even have sites like Facebook but truthfully I will take getting together with a flash and blood friend any day over virtual connections. Don’t get me wrong, I think the internet can be a wonderful place to make connections. I have several friends I met years ago through the internet but at a certain point there is the need to connect face to face or even by phone and that is a place I think many of us are failing.

Look, we are all busy but there should always be a time for the people we care about in our lives.