I’m
in the process of reading a book about the building of the first
transcontinental railroad. What strikes me as interesting is the fact that
this thing was completed about 70 years or so before I was born. My
grandparents or certainly their parents would have been alive when this
happened. The book is extremely interesting and describes all of the
hardships that these men faced in finishing the project on time. Well,
this led me to think about a few things. Such as, the fact that in my
lifetime, we’ve always had trains, so it wasn’t any big deal to
me.
I would imagine for the people living 70
years before me, it was certainly a big deal. It made headlines around the
world and changed the way we do business in this country. Imagine being
able to get across the entire country in a week as opposed to having to go
around South America or overland through Panama to get to California.
Anyway, I got to thinking about the things that our kids take for granted
that have always been in their lives but not in everyone else’s. Does
that make any sense? You know what I mean. Stuff we didn’t have when we
were growing up, our kids have had all of their lives. Like color
television. I remember the time before television, but that’s another
story.
Our kids today have always had microwaves,
faxes and for the most part cell phones. They have always had cordless
phones. I asked my youngest son what the earliest form of records he
remembered and he said…"Those great big ones……" I asked
what speed those were and he thought "33 or something". He
looked surprised when I said the real old ones were 78’s. he’s never
heard of a 78, much less seen one that he knew of. We talked about 45’s
and he remembered that those as "The kind with the big hole". We
used to have them for singles when they came out. He remembered them as a
child on Fisher-Price toys. Do they still sell singles? I don’t know, I
haven’t bought any "new" records or whatever in years. My son
‘saw’ an 8 track once but it was years ago. He says that kids today
haven’t ever used a cassette for music since they only know CD’s or
something called mp-3. How things change. If you recall 8 tracks you
remember that you could fast forward, but not reverse. If you wanted to
hear something you generally had to drive around until your song came up
again.
Personally, CD’s are much better. Keeping
these thoughts in mind, I got to noticing television shows and how dated
they become. For example if you see some cop show from the early 70’s,
first thing I notice (besides the clothes) is the lack of computers in the
police station. What an impact these have had on our lives. I don’t
think anyone would disagree that the progress we’ve made in the past 30
or 40 years has been helpful and made our lives better. What we used to
think of as ‘modern’ or ‘most up to date’ goes obsolete in just a
few years and is replaced with something much more efficient and often
less expensive. My first calculator cost about $600. Now we get them given
to us.
If we’ve made this much progress in the
past 30-40 years, one can only imagine what we’ll have in the next 25 or
so. Change is good for all of us. We should not be afraid of it or reject
it. We have to be prepared for it when it comes and welcome it with open
arms. Change is the cornerstone of progress. We still have a long way to
go to get to where we need to be. As usual get in touch with me at www.pearyperry.com.
I leave you with this final thought for the week…."Why doesn’t
Tarzan have a beard?" |
