People, We Need To Do Better

”Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence; true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation.”

-          George Washington

It’s crazy to see how much things have changed.  If any of you get the chance, sit down and remove yourself from all of the situations that you are dealing with.  Reminisce.  Now realize that things aren’t what they used to be.  There was a time when receiving a handwritten letter or sticking a picture on a wall meant something; there was a real quality to those kinds of things.  Nowadays, there are no needs for those types of sentiments.  We live our lives by numbers these days;  it’s all about how fast we can get something, or how many people follow us on something.  I can’t fault people for buying into the ideals of this new world because being progressive is a necessary human trait.  We evolve and that’s how we refine ourselves and get better at things.  However, there is a risk with rapid change.  I’m not a moralist by any means, but I have come to realize that we have sacrificed quality for quantity over the years.  This shift in interest has caused us to become diluted as individuals.  It has caused us to break some of the best habits that we’ve spent most of our lives putting together all for the sake of keeping up.  We’ve lost our way people, but it’s all right.

We just need to do a better job at remembering the little things.  We need to do a better job of seeing through all of the smoke and mirrors and realizing what is real and what isn’t.  Understand that just because someone follows you on Twitter or Instagram that doesn’t make them your friend.  We need to remind ourselves that we are judged by our deeds.  I’m not against social networking at all – I love it actually.  My concern is that we as people no longer know how to be a friend or know how to love each other anymore.  We all need to do better.  As I sit here and write this, I can’t help but think about how many things that I could have done differently.  So many events have passed where I have opted to send a text message to friend or family member as opposed to calling them or physically going to visit them.  On a daily basis, I look around and think to myself that we’ve eliminated the effort in friendship.  I have literally seen people on first dates sitting at the table and being pasted to their phones instead of trying to learn about each other.  It’s strange, but this is the new norm.  The things that I’ve listed are only half of the battle.  We’ve become so accustomed to having things quickly and at our disposal that when something needs to take time to develop, the interest is lost.  All of a sudden, we are all too busy to be there for the ones we love.  It’s sad that we make a big deal over things that should be a common occurrence.  If you’re far away from a friend, give him/her a call and check in on them instead of waiting for a Thursday so you “#TBT” it and hope to get 50 likes.  This wasn’t intended to make anyone feel bad, I just felt like we needed a little reminder as to how treat each other.  After all, we’re better than this.