On our way home from our last vacation at Walt Disney World I was lost in thought on the plane. It was early evening the sun was down and most everyone around me were lost in the glow of their computer screens, no conversation to be heard. We now live in an urbanized environment, manmade, false, straight, boxy, symmetrical, cubes, squares, rectangles, artificially conditioned, grid like street patterns, monotonous. But a human needs and relishes nature, curves, color, cold, hot, unplanned, random, fluid, meandering, flowing, asymmetrical.

We have just left the artificial entertainment of the great storyteller that is Walt Disney and his Imaginers and I will say we enjoyed our time there. But our phones were turned off and we enjoyed each other’s company while walking and waiting for the next attraction. There were so many, children to adults, that when faced with a wait for the next stimulation pulled their phones out and were lost to all, while eating they were on their phones posting to whoever about whatever, and those zombies walking blindlessly to the next attraction staring at their phones while others had to dodge around them or get run over. And I hate to say it but some even kept their phones in front of their faces when on rides or in a theater watching a movie. Their family, kids, love ones or friends could have been a million miles away instead of right next to them, SO SAD what we have become with technology and the need for instant gratification of others.

We have become a people who have become sheep, needing to be kept, told what to do, how to act, to be fed and kept safe by others, we have lost our spirituality, we require artificial stimulation to keep us happy and content, thinking only of ourselves.

Most have not enjoyed natures beauty, seen the stars, slept under the Milky Way or just enjoyed quite solitude without distractions. We are lost in the artificial stimulation of our cities, towns and urbanized areas.

As I sit here writing, yes with a pen and paper journal, there is no interaction even among people flying together, with their ear buds plugged in they are working, listening to music, watching movies, or playing a game hypnotized by the warm glow of the pulsating screen in front of them.

I look out the window and see the earth far below and see the small patches of the lights that are towns and the dark areas in-between. How I long to be down there in one of those dark areas sitting next to a warm fire looking up at the multitude of stars in quiet solitude or possibly with family, old friends or newly found friends discussing life and working out the problems of our societies. Late when the fire dims I will head to my tent to sleep, no if the weather is pleasant enough I might sleep out with the canopy of stars as my roof.