A deep sense of loss

Every day, as I reach my office and sit sown at my desk, I can't help but think how monotonous our lives have become. We have lost the sense of the extraordinary, and have substituted it with a desire for more commodities, gadgets and toys. This seems to be the result of an over-technification of our world; we no longer have a need to exert ourselves to achieve every day tasks, there is nothing hidden out there, nothing remarkable happening in the streets of our cities. If you want to keep the thrill you have to go to some really nasty places, such as Baghdad or Beirut or some other war torn country, and even then life becomes "predictable" the fear becomes a constant, the threats are familiar and you get used to them and build your mundane life around them.

We have lost the capacity to marvel at the world, to think there are fairies in the woods, or goblins in the cupboard. Monsters have been expelled from closets and from under our beds, the age of discovery has brought us nothing but a lack of discovery for the average John and Mary, and the worst of it is that we are content to let it happen, to have our orderly lives remain so, to see that our own internal status quo (not to mention the social one) remain unaltered, and that we can look forward to next year's new car model to change the one we now have, or the latest electronic gadget from one of the few big manufacturers, and all of this while we drift into nothingness, and like Willy Loman feel we are better because we are liked, that we have struck it big with all of those gadgets, when in reality all we have done is loose a vital part of human spirit, the drive to change, to explore, to face insurmountable odds and conquer the world.

I sure hope I can live long enough to have a life, and not a collection of commodities and debts to relate my life to the world...