The cable service went out again after being off for 2.5 days and my mind is wandering aimlessly wondering what to do next. I spent 30 minutes playing Hyper Bowl on my computer and then wandered over to solitaire and quickly became bored. We came home from church after the Christmas play and dinner in hopes of curling up in front of the television to watch another showing of Alias. My wife and I looked at each other and voiced our concern about missing a continuation sequel to last weeks Third Watch program that is shown on Monday evening.

As I catalog and analyze within my mind all the different possibilities that I have for entertaining myself this evening it occurs to me that I am a slave to technology and modern conveniences. It was amazing to me how much I got done in the two and a half days while the cable service was out. During our loss of Cable TV and high speed Internet access I was able to find the time to do some office cleaning and organization that sorely needed to get done. When the modern conveniences are available to lull me into a sense of tranquility and otherwise occupy my mental attention I am able to let other things go in life that perhaps would need my attention.

Life is what we make of it and there is nothing wrong with modern conveniences. We all love electricity which provides us with power for heating, AC, appliances and power for our computers. How much time and energy is being sucked out of our days because of modern conveniences and technology? How much value is being added to our lives because of modern technology and how much is being taken away? Do we even think about what we might be missing because of our aversion to what modern technology makes available to us?

No matter how addicted you may be to modern day conveniences or technology the life cycle never stops. Life marches on and if you are not careful it will pass you by while you are lost in the haze. All around us we see advertisers trying to determine our self worth and our value to society by convincing us that we must have this and we must have that. Marketing firms spend millions trying to convince us that we can look younger, thinner and that clothing, cars, prestige, power and that special house will cause you to be successful. We are aware of the subliminal messages and even though we may not make a conscious effort to pursue the hyped up dreams of the advertisers subconsciously we are making note of what they are saying and if we are not careful we can get sucked into a trap that will cause us to chase our tails in the pursuit of obtaining all that we can get our hands on.

Television, Cable, Satellite TV, Internet, radio, news media in written form and other forms of media that I am probably forgetting capture a large portion of our attention span. Media outlets of all types provide us with one thing and that is information. How we receive the information, how often we consume it and finally what we do with it determines how much value it adds or subtracts to our lives. Information and misinformation is swirling all around us and it is our choice to control what comes into our minds and how we will utilize it.

How can this be you may be asking yourself. How can we allow all of this information which bombards us from every angle to control our lives and consume so much of our time. How can we manage our daily lives more effectively and use the technology as a tool which will add value to our lives? Some of you may even be in denial as you read this and think that you are not wasting any precious time and that there is nothing wrong with being entranced by the endless flow of information that is shoved down our throat on a daily basis. How many of us are just happy about the way things are and have no intention of even considering some of these thoughts?

My challenge to you is simple. Find a piece of paper and a writing instrument and make a list of tasks that need to get done around the house. These tasks could be anything. Tasks that take 5 minutes to accomplish or tasks that could be large enough to be projects that would take hours of your time every day to accomplish. When the task list for around the house is done consider doing a list of things that you need to do that involves your family. If you don't have an immediate family what about your relatives, parents, children etc? Is there anything that has been neglected there because of a lack of time to do it? Think about any area of your life that would require time and attention to get things done. How big is your list getting to be now?

I am as guilty as you are. I love these modern conveniences and technology and flow of information that comes from it all. I believe that when Mother Nature dumps tons of ice and snow on us and causes all of our man made technology to come to a grinding stop because of power failure I believe that it gives us time to stop and consider all of this.
I am not advocating that we throw out our coffee pot, dishwasher and personal computers for the sake of getting back to oneness with our neighborhood or community. What I am advocating is that we take a step back from the daily madness and consider how much time is being utilized for the good of our humanity vs. just wasting our time and being yet another avenue of endless entertainment.