I’ve reached the age where I need help to change a lightbulb.
Not in a lamp, but in an overhead fixture. I could do it, but I’ve promised my daughters not to climb ladders when I’m home alone. Since I have high ceilings and only a four-step ladder (step stool), it’s really a stretch to reach those flush mount fixtures with three tiny screws holding the globe. I could do it, but it’s smarter to rely on someone taller and younger, no matter how much I hate being dependent on others.
These days, the lists of things for which I am dependent upon others grows ever longer.
Keeping up with new technology is beyond me. Thank goodness for those who assist me in setting up a television, installing a printer, using a new phone, maintaining a website and newsletter, designing a book cover, formatting an interior design, and the list goes on.
Truthfully, it’s not that I can’t do these things, but that I’m averse to dedicating the time and brain power necessary to learn how to do these things -- especially since technology changes so quickly and most of those tasks occur infrequently.
I’m retired. I would rather spend my time having coffee with friends, viewing the movies I missed seeing in the last four decades, traveling, dreaming about my next adventure, spending time with my grandchildren and other family members, walking in the woods, trying out a new recipe, teaching and taking continued learning classes, going to plays or concerts, painting, crafting, writing, and reading good books.
Recently, I reread Emily St. John Mandel’s book Station Eleven, which is a post- apocalyptic look at a world decimated by a flu pandemic. One of the key questions in the book centers around technology and education. Not how to best use AI or computers, but rather what knowledge about a technological civilization is necessary in a world without a power-grid, without cell towers, without gasoline powered automobiles or airplanes. Should children born in a time without these inventions be taught about their existence?
Personally, I’m grateful for the non-technological skills my generation learned: how to read a book, write a research paper without AI or computers, how to plant a garden, read a map, prepare a meal without a microwave, set up a tent, knit a sweater, and entertain ourselves in the great outdoors.
This morning I read an article by Randy Woodley, a theologian and co-founder of the Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice, which was featured in Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation. Woodley wrote about planting seeds – literally planting many varieties of seeds that Indigenous peoples have kept alive for hundreds of years despite removals and relocations. In the article, he asks, “What is ours to do?”
The answer is “whatever is right in front of us.” We are not called to do everything, but we are each called to do something. Whether it’s making baskets, tutoring a child, caring for the elderly, or helping the technologically challenged, as we do our part, we plant the seeds for a future we’ll never see.
Helping others and allowing other to help us falls right in line with doing our part. I don’t have to do everything, but I will do what is mine to do.