How fast-forwarding ravages happiness

When we accidentally watch commercials instead of fast-forwarding a recorded television program past them, and we’re of a certain age, it harkens back to a simpler time when choices such as fast-forwarding did not exist.

The speed of change blinds us to all we’ve experienced and endured in order to arrive at any particular stage in life. We live in a world that moves so fast we can only strive to keep up.

Fast-forwarding or not is evidence that our minds can recommend we slow down and live in a fashion that suited us before the variable of advanced technology was introduced and became mainstream or the new norm.

I still think it strange we spend so much time holding up our phones only to look at them.

Some of us use both hands to communicate with them. I suppose it’s no stranger than using a rotary phone to make a telephone call. At the time of this innovation, we were awestruck at the promise of improvement in the quality of life and our connections to those in our life.

We complain when our modern-day phones do not work as they should.

We moan about how bad a particular application or app is on them that stubbornly refuses to perform the way we expect.

The rotary phone was simplicity personified. It did just one thing and did it perfectly well. The only time errors of any kind were involved in its use was when users misdialed the numbers–some of the first cases of operator error in recorded history.

Apps on smartphones are like multi-tasking–they demonstrate that the phone can perform several functions or operations in mediocre fashion–just like the person that sets out to do several things at once only to discover that while they may have completed some of these acts, the quality was questionable if not at best good enough.

When do we put together all that is in front of us? Why do we spend a good portion of life struggling with which way to turn?

I would suggest going with your gut is not as good as spending a reasonable amount of time going over possible directions you might choose to pursue a course of action. And then going through with the decided upon course of action.

Once something is set in motion is not the time to consider what might have been. This would lead to unnecessary regret; all regret is unnecessary albeit unavoidable at times.

Like anything else, regret is best served in moderation or small, aspirin-like doses.

I used to have no regrets until multi-tasking became a thing.

I regret jumping on the multitasking bandwagon much to my detriment.

I could not have seen or predicted how many recruiters tossed my resume after reading what a good mutlti-tasker I was. While I took too much time to remove it from the resume, I at least did advise a co-worker to remove it from her resume as it was obvious she was unaware of the harm it could do.

Looking at our phones is never going to be as satisfying an act as the phone calls that were made by the users of the rotary phone.

We didn’t expect anything from the phone other than to connect us to someone at the other end.

Now we expect so much from our smartphones that we call them stupid when they fail or let us down.

If it’s not time to lower our expectations, then perhaps we should resort to creating separate devices to carry out all the functions our phones do. This is the strategy Apple employed when it recently broke up iTunes only to create three separate apps for all the things it did.

Our phones have become multi-taskers.

And we all know the levels of quality that multi-tasking initiates.

Watch the commercials once in a while.

And temporarily refrain from fast-forwarding.

It’s the only way we have to travel back in time.