Losing it!
June 25, 2020:
What would it take for you to lose your shit? I mean seriously, and don’t even try to tell me that it would never happen to you, that you’re too calm of a person and that you have total control over your emotions, because I’ll freakin’ lose it!
What if you had a whack of dough invested in the stock market, and you woke up one morning to discover that you just lost twenty percent of your portfolio due to a sudden downturn. Money that took years of compounding interest, monthly dollar cost averaging, and dividend payouts to accumulate, gone overnight. Would that do it?
Or maybe you’ve been running a business on thin margins and due to the current environment, you can no longer make a go of it. Through no fault of your own you’ve been forced into closing the doors never to reopen. Would that be enough? What about a summer camping trip that’s been planned for months and now that the time is here the forecast is rain, rain and more rain?
For me, it probably doesn’t even take that much. You know, a little “Bloop! Bloop!” (some kind of texting sound) on one of my kids’ phones at the dinner table and everybody better duck because the fork is flying. Is that wrong? Okay…maybe, but why is it so difficult to maintain a no phones policy at the dinner table anyway? Sure, we’ve all got important things going on in our lives, but can we not unplug from the outside world even if it’s just for a quick dinner?
How do we get through the day without the help of our smart phones to guide us anyway? Emailing, texting, research, music, getting directions, it’s endless. Sure, technology is making our lives easier in terms of on-line shopping and taking care of business, as well as sending out quick messages to people without the need to call and spend wasted time on superfluous conversation. I mean why bother getting to know someone if you don’t have to, right? Albert Einstein once wrote, “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
You see all of the texting and driving (accidents up), texting while walking (sometimes right into a pole), I’ve even seen people texting while biking (very bold). It’s truly dumbfounding how the next generation operates completely and utterly hooked into their phones. Yes, I am guilty now and again and yes, I can be a hypocrite at times, but aren’t we all?
The other day I inadvertently used the wrong pin number (the tap didn’t work) on my credit card which in turn caused it to go into decline mode, forcing me to have to call the card company and have it reset. They told me that I had twelve hours in which to find a coinciding ATM and run through a set of procedures in order to accomplish that mission. So, like Tom Cruise’s daring character Ethan Hunt, I accepted the task (before the tape self-destructed), and I swiftly headed the short distance down the street to the proper bank, only to find that it had been permanently closed. Being the resourceful type though, I then drove the six or so kilometers to a different location just to find that the “procedure”would not work anyhow (epic fail, probably why I’m not in the movies).
After unsuccessfully going through it again with the card company on the line while at the ATM, they finally disclosed to me that because of the proximity of the expiry date on my current card, a new one had been recently sent out, which although I had not yet received may still have somehow deactivated the current one (well…isn’t that lovely). You would have thought that I would have been able to just go into the bank and show some ID and have it reactivated, but without an account at their bank, no joy.
There is an incredible amount of new technology being developed out there. Things like organic robots (performs tasks inside the human body), living concrete (actually repairs itself), sweat powered smart watches (kind of self-explanatory), coffee biofuel (using recycled coffee grounds for power) and floating farms (pretty cool), but when something as simple as a credit card issue can’t be dealt with over the phone or via text in this new world that we live in, and I’m made to run around town like an idiot, I swear to god I’m going to lose my shit!
Until next time.
P.S. Thanks for reading.