There was a time in this country when family was the center of all that was, it was everything. 'Was' being the operative word. Family knew you better than anyone else. Making sure you knew your manners was one of your mother's main objectives. Everyone at the table every night at the same time for dinner was something you didn't stray from unless you were dying. Having dinner at a friend's house wasn't something you did every day, you did it on rare occasions. Homework was done without you having to be asked because you knew if you didn't want privileges taken away, you kept your grades up. People actually hand wrote letters in cursive and sent them through the mail on a regular basis. Really they did, I'm not lying. Kids didn't have their own cars when they got their licence, and if they did, it certainly wasn't new.
It seems like what we gained with technology, we lost socially. First there were computers that were nothing more than glorified typewriters, but damn they were cool. We thought playing text games were coolest thing ever. No pictures, no sound, just words and commands. Pagers came along and it was great that people could make contact no matter where you were or what you were doing. They paged you and you called. It was a life saver if you had an emergency and needed someone. It was later when pagers became cell phones and computers opened the world to us, that we began to isolate ourselves from each other. People now call you anytime they want, and if we have a cell phone we answer it just to be sure we aren't missing anything. In the old days (damn, I never thought I would use that phrase), we actually had down time. Now, we constantly have phones in our hands, whether we are talking on them or texting. Time we used to spend with family, is now spent on the computer in isolation. Kids don't play outside anymore, they play on computers.They don't climb trees, or build forts just to tear them down and build them again somewhere else. There are no more conversations over the inner table because everyone has a different schedule. We wrapped ourselves in technology and lost sight of what was most important.
When we quit watching, when we quit talking to each other, the world spun out of control without our realizing. When we quit watching, we forgot about the wars that our people were fighting. I don't think the people who are fighting in these wars for us were doing it so we could play on computers and ignore the fact that our country was spinning out of control while they were brave enough to do it. When we quit watching new laws were being made and new bills were getting passed. We were blissfully ignorant of it all. Okay, some of us knew, some of us were aware, but were we putting all those pieces together? Were we so committed to inspecting each piece that we lost sight of the tragic picture they were creating?
What kind of mess are our the troops coming home to, and didn't we owe it to them to take care of things here while they were over there fighting? Did you know it takes a year and a half for a soldier to get a medical discharge? A year and a half of sitting around and waiting for papers to be shuffled around. This problem has persisted for years. Did you know that while they are waiting for those medical discharges, they can't go to school. They are losing their homes and becoming homeless. Many of them need help but are too proud to ask for it.
So, what are the rest of us going to do about it? What are we going to do to help them return to some semblance of normalcy so that the families they have dreamed of returning to, don't fall apart? They deserve to have that picture of what family used to be in order to have a safe place to fall when they come home.
