Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Future World

Leaving San Francisco last week I got to think about just how real our "Brave New World" already is. I used to think of this future world as a place that existed in the minds of the science fiction writers. As I arrived at the airport in the hybrid taxi it occurred to me more than before just how "futuristic" our existence already is.

Our grandparents could not even have fathomed the idea that one could fly from city to city, or country to country, in one day, let alone that an airport would be like a "train station" ... today an airport is a transit hub just like every other.

The entire process at the airport is also so "Brave New World". After you have retrieved your boarding card ... having scanned your identity document into a machine, you stand in a long line to enter a "millimeter wave detector" ... (Seriously? What the hell is that anyway!?!) scanning us for our safety in the skies!

Human behavior itself has evolved so much in the last ten years. When we need to figure out how something works, we search for it on YouTube and somewhere in the world someone will have posted a video tutorial explaining how to use it. I had to use YouTube recently to figure out how to start a Prius (yes, this is true!) and I have also used it before to figure how to use one of those fancy coffee machines with the pods that they have all over Europe.

I do see that it could be possible, that I am simply not of this new "generation" but I do evolve and I do my best to take part in new things. I think it is most important to stay interested in all things (new and old) Thankfully traveling keeps my day to day interesting, and I get to see how trends change in other parts of the world.

In my future, I hope to slow down a little. I dream about less travel, about owning a dog and spending more time running in the hills. I want to travel for leisure and for pleasure and I also want to remember to value some of the "old" things of this world.

But for now, I will live for today and with every breath of my being enjoyed it as much as I can. In the words of Buddah: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

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