Just finished watching season 1 of The Last Of Us

There was a scene where Joel and Ellie encounter some giraffes and it made me cry

Granted I had had a few glasses of wine. The kids are with Ryan (my ex-husband), I had a good session with Monica (my therapist) and listened to Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan all morning

The scene with the giraffes and actually the scene where Ellie sees the outside for the first time and rides in a car for the first time … that’s what I wish for my kids. A moment of awe with the REAL world around them and not the virtual world.

It’s difficult to connect and impress a generation that lives life in sound bites 2 to 3 minutes at a time at most, and if they don’t like something … swipe left. Instead of moments of awe, they have seconds of awe and are looking for what’s next.

The ending of The Truman Show speaks to that. It’s a very dramatic ending for Truman and the viewers are involved in the emotion but when the moment is over they look for something else to watch.

Is this an American thing? An internet thing? A privileged thing? 

Being a parent in this “digital” age (for lack of a better term) and pioneering the onset of the internet … my perspective has turned upside down. I’m Gen X. I am bridging the gap between the digital age and the non-digital age and I am seeing first hand the effects of it. 

One could almost say (maybe doomsday sayers or those prone to histrionics [me]), World War III has already begun. And the war is with ourselves. Reality bites. And we now have the ability to actually escape reality. Movies like NetFlix’ The Electric State, or Steven Spielsberg’s Ready Player One and Artificial Intelligence all speak to the predicted effects and the human response to the ever evolving technology and advancements that seemingly make our lives easier and convenient. 

I’m learning first hand the impact of the luxuries of ease and convenience. As a member of Gen X, I see ease and convenience. My children, growing up at the forefront of the dawn of the internet and smartphones, see these conveniences as a way of life. As a way of living. I have inadvertently made them dependent on what I consider luxury. 

Instead of having to go to the library or invest in a set of encyclopedias to look something up, all my kids have to do is point and click. And nowadays, have ChatGPT do their homework for them. Ease and convenience have become my best friends and worst enemies. 

At the onset of ease and convenience, as a parent and as my children were young enough to trust the choices my husband and I made, we simply took the devices away and/or limited exposure. Thinking this was enough to allow for new things and still keep our children grounded in reality. 

Reality according to Alicia: To skin their knees. To collect rocks. To explore their surroundings. To be curious why the leaves fall off the trees at a certain time of year. 

At this moment, I am checking myself. I’m telling myself that they should have more experiences like I did. And I also tell myself that this is impossible. I am at a loss at how to cultivate the curiosity of life in my children. Real life. My definition of real life, beyond the necessities of paying taxes, is to feel the breeze on my face. To literally stop and smell the roses. To listen to music. Read a book. These experiences, for me, create an emotional and physical reaction and provoke thought. I want this for my kids.

Why?

Because I believe these are the things that make life worth living. The things that make my life worth living cause a chemical reaction in my body and my mind. I realize I am projecting on my kids about what makes life worth living, and yet I believe these “things” make life worth living because I chemically and physically feel alive! And those reactions are sustainable because those “things” don’t need to be plugged in! My children feel a chemical and physical reaction in their bodies to the things they search for in video games and the internet. But they are not sustainable. They require electricity! They are not reliable! Even if you have a kick-ass internet ping or full bars or super supreme connectivity. 

Connectivity. That’s a fascinatingly descriptive word. We are connected but .. are we connected? 

I don’t mind being connected to my bank without having to go in and speak with a teller or whoever types in my account numbers and answers the questions I have. That shit I can do myself online without having to wait physically in line or wait on the phone on hold. Same goes for the doctor or any other healthcare visit. I have the ability (for the most part) to access the information and transfer it if I need to right from the comfort of my home office.

What I want most for my children is to have a healthy balance of reality and technology. To know what’s real and not real. Whatever “real” means. Technology is unavoidable. Right now, I feel “real” for my kids comes from the screens they look at 8 to 12 hours a day. How could that not be real? If I spent 8 to 12 hours a day doing something, I would understand that that’s my reality. Just ask my ex husband. 

My ex husband’s reality is work. He has 10 hour days, building his retirement and our kids’ college funds. My reality is trying to raise 3 kids and work as a healthcare professional. And that’s what I spend the most time doing in my day, what I exert my energy on, and invest my emotion on. Reality. Reality is relative. And I think that’s where I’m making my mistake. 

I’m thinking there is only one definition of reality for every human being and to some extent maybe that’s true. Let me consider the definition of reality.

According to my Google search of the word “reality”, the dictionary definitions from Oxford Languages state: the world or state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them; the state or quality of having existence or substance.

So …. Not really sure how this correlates to my train of thought at the moment. The wine and vodka doesn’t help. On the other hand, I think it’s the lowering of my inhibitions and biases that releases my thoughts to diverge on tangents that might otherwise be thought of as taboo. 

I guess my where my train of thought is going is that my reality is not going to be my kids’ reality. And that’s okay. Right? It’s natural. Change is natural. And the more I try to fight or slow down change, the more frustrated I get.

I think the other thing that is influencing my musings is that I watch a lot of movies and stream a lot of shows. And while I know some of them are based on a true story or whatever, I am able to read between the drama lines and look for the root of the drama. Then, if I am so inclined, I research what I’ve seen on the “big screen” and draw my own conclusions. Now … How do I research? The internet. LOL Yep. The irony is not lost on me. 

I can’t get away from it. I’ve become dependent on it. During a storm last month, the power went out. The lights are whatever but my modem?!? Forget about it! Thank goodness my kids were at their dad’s house where there was still electricity. Me? I relied on 5G and the life of my battery pack to sustain my phone for all my needs. I don’t have a landline so I couldn’t go crazy with my internet usage. What did I do? I fell back on the skills I learned growing up Gen X. I fucking read a book. Now … granted… It was my Kindle that had a 75% charge.

LOL As Bob Dylan so relevantly wrote: The times they are a-changin. 

As a kid, if the electricity went out, my mom would light candles, we would all huddle in the same room (if it was night) and we would play board games or something by candlelight. My mom made it a fun adventure. Despite the fact that tornadoes were blowing our cars across the street and some of the trees on our property were uprooted. Ahhh … an example of my parents’ generation: act like nothing is happening. Denial. Denial. Denial.

Whew! That’s a whole other chapter in the biography of me and my musings.