Fall on the Coast

This time of year in our area is always beautiful. Not in the same way as it is back East where there is so much fall color in the leaves. Our fall is filled with warm days, cool nights, the occasional big surf, and just a feeling in the air that change is coming. I love it!

What I don't love is this: our incessant desire to be "plugged in" at all times! I was in the shower this morning when it hit me. My husband was doing his morning exercises on the bike and listening to his iPod. He was laughing at some comedy routine and it got to me. He is experiencing something funny and unable to share it because he is "plugged in". He is alone in his merriment.

It also hits me at my book club gatherings when many of the ladies are "plugged in" to their iPhones or Blackberries while we are suppose to be discussing the book or our lives or politics, whatever. But they are on their little carry-along computers, doing something obviously more important than what is going on right in front of them. Who is that important? And why do they think that it isn't rude to exclude all who are there to attend to something else that is not an emergency? Are the rest of us really that boring? Do we all need to know, at every step of the way, who is winning the game, the next American Idol, what the score is???

Don't you see the drones walking through the parking lot, ear-pods in, unaware of where they are and what they are doing which should be paying attention to the moving cars? Or walking down the street unaware of any sound around them because their iPod volumn is turned up too high? Or hiking through the woods, unable to hear the sounds of nature? Will they even miss them when they are gone?

Yes, power up your iPods. Upload nature sounds and comedy acts and all the music in the world. This is why Facebook and Twitter came about. We are lacking in communication. We are too plugged in. So then let's go on-line and post brief quips about our lives so the whole world can see. Doesn't that make it better?

And, you say, what are you doing blogging then...

Well, I really don't know if anyone reads this blog anyway. It seems to be more for me to vent or share. I don't have an iPod. I'm not plugged in all the time. I do listen to nature. And, more importantly, I listen to those around me. I do practice the mantra "be here now". Yes, I am an old hippie. I believe. I live. I tune in to what is going on around me. Won't you join me?