Big Thrills

I was listening to the radio the other day and the talk show host was discussing the issue of age and dating.  Callers to the station would weigh in for one position or the other.  Personally speaking, when it comes to humans and the quest to define what is the ‘appropriate ’ manner of behavior dealing with one another, I always find myself on the ‘it depends’ bench.  I mean after all, our species figured out golden rules only to invest herculean efforts into figuring out exceptions to them.

  From that conversation I was thinking about points of view and how often they change; sometimes completely around.  As for me, for instance, I can recall with exacting clarity the thrill I felt way back in my post high school years after moving out of my parents house, into my first apartment; facing the awesome grown-up-task of paying my monthly bills; Oh yeah, sitting at the kitchen table with the small pile of mail from my assorted utilities, car loan, you name it near my elbow. Then writing the checks one at a time; sweating the possibility of running out of cash before I paid them all; oh and the pure glow of self satisfaction I felt when finishing to see some dollars still remained in my account: another month solvent, yeah baby.  Well, that was decades ago and I just can’t fathom any joy out of the monthly drill now; heck it’s entirely done on line, in fact the really important bills are paid automatically.

  I wonder how long that would continue should I suddenly and unexpectedly die? I mean if my wife didn’t do all the necessary paperwork and attesting that I was in fact, departed from this plane of existence. I guess if she did nothing, the process would continue to hum along until the money ran out.  But wait, that’s deposited automatically too.  So in this meandering situationally-dependent discussion, I could in fact perish, and the banks would all be doing their monthly things for like Forever…it’s magical…which brings us to my quote for the day, that also just happens to have reference to technology again ~ in the wake of my recent interlude with its reticence at keeping me off balance and insecure.

   “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic”

Arthur C. Clarke