Openly Obscure

I was reading an article the other day and it was like one of the most shocking articles I've read in awhile. I'm not sure if many of you read it but the CEO of Google urged UPenn grads to turn off their computers and make human connections... Sounds like something I said a few blog posts back! Well, if I have ever had a question of whether or not everything I was writing about was complete and utter BS I guess it wasn't at all! Whew, that's a relief. No, but seriously, UPenn, being one of the most prestigious schools in the country and to hear the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world to say that to them is really something.

It's so ironic how things change in literally the blink of an eye...well not literally but you get my point. The biggest thing in the 20s and 30s was the radio, then it was the TV in the 60s, then the invention of phones, the Internet and so on and so forth. Instead of recording our most precious moments in a Kodak picture, we are able to record them in High Definition quality for posting on YouTube for the entire world to see.

My mom told me to come home today early for some reason and make sure I was home by 7 PM so that we could all sit together for dinner (my brother just came home from Bethlehem, PA where he goes to college) since we don't get to have family dinners that often. So basically, I get home and my mom sits my brothers and I to watch this special on Oprah. Most of her shows are pretty interesting so I give it a shot but it was her TV special, "What You Can Live Without." This family was literally connected to each other by their phones and the Internet. No, I mean literally. If the mother wanted water, she would text message her daughter and the daughter would get the water for her mom...that is if she wasn't busy herself on the Internet or on the phone. That's insane. I know people are connected but that's just pushing it. The father was complaining that he didn't even know his family because he wasn't that into technology and only watched TV most of the time. Anyways, long story short, the family is challenged to lose all of their technology for one week and see if they can last. The best thing that happened was that the family started doing things that didn't require technology. They started having family dinners and going to the son's sports events. They went to the park and played with their dog outside. +1 for exercise, -1 for obesity! Get it? Haha!

So what can we learn from this experiment? Basically that even though we have all this new and awesome technology, we have to make sure we know what's important in life which is family. We always want want want but we never value what we have until its gone and that's the most sad part. Family being the closest to us is always taken for granted. I'm not going to lie, I struggle with it still even though I was much worse in high school and college. Make sure to go out to dinner with your family or sit together at the dinner table at home. Go out to picnics or family vacations. Because as important as your friends are and how easily you can connect to them, the most important connection of all is with your family.