We're in the process of making some trade-offs. All of us. We're picking up the new techno-gadget and signing up for the new service. We're booking ourselves up. The kids are in every activity so they can become well-rounded. Or they're into something deep so they can become an expert. Either way, they're booked up, too. But we're all still connected--we're texting, we're posting, we're blogging (yep, at this very moment). So it's all good, right?
All good. At least for now, because we don't really know how this grows up. Nobody's ever been through it before. We don't know yet (for sure) that all of this is true progress. We just hope it is, because we know we can't deny it. It's here now and it just keeps coming. So we keep making the trade-offs: yes to the smartphone upgrade, no to the quiet weekend away, yes to extra activity and no to more time for just breathing.
In a few years, we'll look back and call it. That decade--the one that started with a dot.com boom and is ending with a highly complex and sophisticated brand of malaise--was the decade of putting our money on the future and turning our back on the past. Can you do that and have true progress? Nobody knows. Nobody has ever done it before.
I'm in it like everybody else--can I keep upgrading without leaving behind something of value? Can I invite technology to take over my life without giving up control? I don't have any answers. All I know is it feels right to take a little time every day to just...breathe.
