How are people down-to-earth these days?

Once upon a time – we would have all remembered the value of greeting each other face-to-face. Chit-chatting with friends and family was such a wonderful moment that even time would have skipped its routine to enjoy those beautiful moments. Beach-walks, family-outings, get together parties have been fading practices in today’s digital world. It is not a surprising fact that if your mobile battery is down and if you end up looking around, you would be orphaned. Social networking apps have taken levels of interaction to newer heights. People are so involved with their mobiles that they have no time to look around. I had this experience once when I was out with friends to a restaurant and everyone on my table was busy with his/her mobile. I and my friends had planned for a get-together after quite a long time and it was solitude in an absolute lively crowd. We have become so down-to-earth humans that we hardly have a second to spare for the people around us. Some ignore known people approaching them, some ignore innocent victims of accidents who are unattended on roadside pavements & some even ignore themselves and end up as accident victims too.

“In the quest of finding the real world digitally, mankind has slowly transcended into a virtual realm.”

The world was never a balanced place where everyone received love and care from every other person around. It is only a few fortunate ones who happened to receive the care they deserved and the majority end up as the ignorant ones I mentioned above. People are so affixed to their phone screen even during work hours (I have to agree that the other extremity of banning mobiles at workplaces is very harsh!!) that they lack focus on critical issues. You would go out with a friend and your friend would be busy texting or updating status on FB or Whatsapping or taking a selfie. The ultimate intention of such advancements was to connect each other eliminating boundaries and mocking distance as a blocking factor of communication. However, that theory has stumbled upon its own fundamentals. People have distanced each other in the name of bonding. Selfies are slowly evolving them to erase the quality of selflessness from humans. I am not against such practices. There should be a balance between the digital and the real world.

Imagine a house where the mom pings on WhatsApp that lunch is ready. She posts the picture of the yummy dish on FB with a status reading – having lunch …feeling lonely. Dad likes the picture on FB and his son and daughter comment from the nearby room saying “sorry mom, we are going out with friends, we won’t be joining you.”

Nevertheless, this habit of exemplifying oneself to establish a strong affinity to “I” in the “We” world has led to untold stories of stress. Imagine a day when all the phones stop working and how would people react? I wouldn’t say that’s the best we could contemplate, just to support my point. It would have unwanted repercussions too. Safety might be an issue, contacting anyone would be an impossible task not because of the phones going out of function but because we have stopped remembering phone numbers. Can we all recall when we last remembered a set of 10 phone numbers of friends with whom we would often interact? It was a reality in the 90s or even around the end of the previous century when we were used to the usual dialler telephones.

One fine day, corporate offices and nations would have to implement public-meeting days where people see each other to reassure themselves how humans would exist in real life. We are so used to seeing display pictures with altered effects that we would not be able to even recognize that same person if he/she is to encounter us on our so called down-to-earth mode.

“Unchain yourself from the routine and spend time with people who still exist as caring souls to make this world alive.”

Note: The irony at this moment of conclusion is that I would have to seek the assistance of all such digital media I spoke about to even make us all aware of what it is doing to everyone.

With love,
Purpledreamer