I thought I would share what I was thinking about as I smoked my pipe today. I have not edited it so it is pretty law. Also, as a disclaimer I am a Christian and it comes out in the writings somewhat. I don't want to get into a religious debate as that is not the purpose of this forum but PM me any questions you may have or even comments about my religion and I will be happy to reply to them. Furthermore, I am not saying pipe forums are bad in anyway or that technology is evil and we should all go move out into the woods by any means. It is just my perspective on things as I smoked today.
We live in a world full of distractions. How often do people go through life as one big distraction? We are constantly plugged into technology and often don’t take a chance to view the world around us. I am often reminded of this as I smoke my pipe and browse the various forums. I look down at the clock hours later and it feels as if only minutes have passed. Is this how I want my life to be? When I am on my death bed will I say, “I sure am glad I spent countless hours on my computer”. No, I would say that this is not how I would want to remember my life. I want to go out and experience things. I want to live. I don’t want to be tied into technology every minute of my life.
Technology literally sucks your life away and a few minutes turns into a few hours. However, we don’t have the luxury of gaining these hours back. I heard somewhere that the average human has 657,000 hours to live. That might sound like a huge number of hours; however, consider the daily functions of a human. Humans, on average, sleep 7-8 hours a day. This calculates to about 2555 hours a year and 191,625 in their lifetime. These calculations are based on a person living to be 75 years of age and sleeping 7 hours a night, imagine if they slept more than 7 hours a night. This gives humans, or at least Americans, 465,375 hours of being awake in their lifetime. What am I going to do with all of this time?
If I spend 3 hours a day on the computer I will have wasted roughly 82,125 hours of my life. This might not seem like very much compared to the 465,375 hours but to break that down to days that is 3,421 days. Given the fact that if I live to be 75 I will only have 27,375 days on this earth; I don’t want to look back on my life and realize that I wasted any of it. How productive am I on the computer anyways?
There are many other productive things I could be doing. Such as better someone else’s life or interacting with people on a personal level. After all, isn’t a relationship with other humans and God what really matters? Jesus himself said the two greatest commandments were to love God and your neighbor. If you break everything down it is all about relationships with another human. Let’s say I work for a big corporation. The corporation is run by a group of people who work to support their families. They have people who work for them whose end result is to work to support themselves or their families. We sell our products to other companies who are made up of people who resell the items to support their families or themselves. Isn’t the end result here to support our families and ourselves?
When you break almost anything down it comes down to caring for human needs. I want to be able to look back at my life and see little seeds in people’s lives that I planted when I helped them. I want to see that these moments will shape their families for the rest of their lives. I want to make a difference that will impact not only people’s lives but that they will pass on to other people and consequently the world forever. All of this technology only serves as a distraction to the world around us and people in general. I have roughly 473,040 hours left in my life. What will I do today? What will you do today?
We live in a world full of distractions. How often do people go through life as one big distraction? We are constantly plugged into technology and often don’t take a chance to view the world around us. I am often reminded of this as I smoke my pipe and browse the various forums. I look down at the clock hours later and it feels as if only minutes have passed. Is this how I want my life to be? When I am on my death bed will I say, “I sure am glad I spent countless hours on my computer”. No, I would say that this is not how I would want to remember my life. I want to go out and experience things. I want to live. I don’t want to be tied into technology every minute of my life.
Technology literally sucks your life away and a few minutes turns into a few hours. However, we don’t have the luxury of gaining these hours back. I heard somewhere that the average human has 657,000 hours to live. That might sound like a huge number of hours; however, consider the daily functions of a human. Humans, on average, sleep 7-8 hours a day. This calculates to about 2555 hours a year and 191,625 in their lifetime. These calculations are based on a person living to be 75 years of age and sleeping 7 hours a night, imagine if they slept more than 7 hours a night. This gives humans, or at least Americans, 465,375 hours of being awake in their lifetime. What am I going to do with all of this time?
If I spend 3 hours a day on the computer I will have wasted roughly 82,125 hours of my life. This might not seem like very much compared to the 465,375 hours but to break that down to days that is 3,421 days. Given the fact that if I live to be 75 I will only have 27,375 days on this earth; I don’t want to look back on my life and realize that I wasted any of it. How productive am I on the computer anyways?
There are many other productive things I could be doing. Such as better someone else’s life or interacting with people on a personal level. After all, isn’t a relationship with other humans and God what really matters? Jesus himself said the two greatest commandments were to love God and your neighbor. If you break everything down it is all about relationships with another human. Let’s say I work for a big corporation. The corporation is run by a group of people who work to support their families. They have people who work for them whose end result is to work to support themselves or their families. We sell our products to other companies who are made up of people who resell the items to support their families or themselves. Isn’t the end result here to support our families and ourselves?
When you break almost anything down it comes down to caring for human needs. I want to be able to look back at my life and see little seeds in people’s lives that I planted when I helped them. I want to see that these moments will shape their families for the rest of their lives. I want to make a difference that will impact not only people’s lives but that they will pass on to other people and consequently the world forever. All of this technology only serves as a distraction to the world around us and people in general. I have roughly 473,040 hours left in my life. What will I do today? What will you do today?
