Today I realized how cold technology can be, how devoid of human emotion and compassion it is. Technology is one medium through which we express our feelings. Cell phones, online chats, blogs, message boards, videos, online profiles, the list goes on. We can respond almost instantaneously to people half-way across the world... But does technology capture our feelings? Can it understand our deepest emotions? Surely we can use it to project our preferences, styles, criticisms, etc. We can use it to store whatever information we choose to express. But does it know who we are?

I'm currently going through a divorce and just today deleted my soon to be ex-wife's contact entry from the cell phone. Did my phone care at all? It just asked "Are you sure?" (Don't you wish every decision in life had a pop-up appear like this? Are you sure?). I chose "Yes" and another pop-up appeared "Entry erased". That's it. She's forever erased from my life as far as my cell phone is concerned. Doesn't my phone remember all the long, romantic conversations I had with her over the months? All the never-ending arguments we had? Doesn't my phone know how important a role it played in our long-distance relationship? Can't my phone check the call logs and see how often we talked to each other? Unfortunately the answer is a resounding NO.

As a society we are utilizing modern communication systems more and more to start, sustain, and end relationships with people. Sure social networking is great because it allows us to catch up with many people at once, in an efficient manner (the extreme version of this is Twitter). But technology doesn't care what we do, it doesn't know what we feel inside. Once something is deleted, its deleted. (For better or worse, we haven't figured out yet how to delete our feelings.)

So let's not rely on technology so much. Let's get in touch with each other personally, face-to-face. Let's express our emotions to each other as humans, as the social animals we are. Let's look each other in the eye. Let's smile, laugh, scream, shout, cry, celebrate, commiserate, in front of each other. Let's use all our five senses to be closer to each other. I want to express myself to everyone in the world, but I want them to see me, feel me, experience me, naturally... not through the glow of the monitor and low hum of the computer.

The future is now

The future is now. The present is already the past. The past will haunt us. The present will turn into the haunting past if we don't treat every moment as the future. Every moment your actions affect your future. After 27 years and some odd months on this planet, I finally realize how precious time is, and how little or how much we have (based on your perspective). Decisions that I made with full confidence years ago now seem like the worst possible moves I could have made. I basically spent all this time without any specific goals in life. Making a decision without a goal in mind is like hammering a nail without knowing where to hammer it.

Sometimes you try to laugh it off but it doesn't help. This is one of those times for me, where so many things that have been building up slowly now all happen at once... Amazing how one day you can feel in complete control and the next its as if the steering wheel flew off. Please no pity parade, but if you feel like posting a hilarious joke to lighten up my mood, go right ahead.

Hey I just realized this year I passed my 10,000th day on this blue planet (which by the way didn't always look blue) and I didn't mark the occasion in any way :( Whoever is reading this, if you're approaching that special day, go all out and party. Let everyone know you've been growing on this planet for 10,000 days.