Tech or Nature: God?

 This is not a religious topic; it's more a philosphical discussion, please. Today I heard, on air,  someone say that the real God is Tech and that, as a form of religion, it tells us how, what, who, where, when, and why to live.  People have Tech with them, constantly and believe in it entirely without question what it purports to offer them and what pleasures they gain from it. They say they cannot live or survive without it. Therefore, said this chap in his theory, it is  the new God. I can't agree. I would argue that Earth Nature is the true God, if so, over Tech. To me, Nature is what made us, and. therefore, through us, Tech. Tech is man-made ironically. I maintain that Tech is a kind of "devil" not  God. Why? Nature is pure and we the creatures of Earth from whence we came somehow, some way, live within it and use it. therefore, it alone is absolutely necessary to our survival. Tech on the other hand, can very quickly be rendered useless if certain forces of nature are removed, or changed or redirected. Tech is vulnerable and could very quickly be stopped. Nature is also vulnerable, but its demise, even though some think it imminent and that possibly we creatures may become extinct, works slowly in eons, not seconds or minutes or hours.  Nature Earth will not for a long, long time end. Nature doesn't deliberately destroy humanity. Sure, there are natural disasters and during these times, Tech can be helpful to a degree. But in the end, the ultimate end, Earth will continue. Tech is a friend and an enemy. This fact is true and proven. What made and controls Tech,  is Man and Man is a creature that must have Earth's natural resources to use and to be able to live on and by.  Tech, alone, cannot do that. Someone has to be at the "switch: and that "someone" is Man, the living, a breathing product of Nature.  I have never heard of Tech being able to breathe oxygen for life. I maintain, Earth is, if any, the "God". 

Great Gramma's Gift

Great grandmothers are often left to sit and rock smiling in their chairs in the back room. These ladies are what you were genetically, that became part of you.  I knew only my grandmother, not my great grandmothers who came from other places. I was able to speak and live with, for a time, my grandmother, the Canadian one. I am ninety and lived in the latter grandmother's home during a young adult time that my sister, I and my grandmother were all engaged to be married. Believe it or not!  My other foreign grandmother who was also Canadian and came to this county at the beginning of the last century as a young woman as yet to be married, was from Hungary but of German descent. She was too embarrassed to speak her own languages. We simply called her Gramma and took her for granted. She was, in real life, a farm woman with a rather harsh husband, my grandfather, a prize winning horseman and a strict model of what true hard work means. Gramma had a garden in front of her house that was as big as an average building lot in the city. She had only her own time to work on it, outside gathering eggs, cooking for eight to ten or whomever stopped by the farm, helping grampa with everything he asked her to do, milking the cows, feeding the  pigs and canning, baking and cooking everything from scratch. She had no electricity, only cold running water and a humble house. Grampa had the leather rocking chair. We didn't notice if ever she sat down on anything. She was part of the scene only.  Her garden was perfect, not a weed. In it was every and any vegetable, fruit and vine. She seldom spoke. We learned nothing about her past, only that her father was a magistrate. That's all; and now she is gone. Speak to your grandparents and know where you came from. It made you. It is a gift. 

Zero Hour

Life is long and complex and uneven and superb. Along the way, as we or I, look back the ninety year path behind me, I see all the beauty of life, the wonder of love, the joy and warmth of family, the stack of tiny but pleasant accomplishments and I feel no regret. When one begins to add up the value of these, it comes to a huge number that is almost impossible to conceive of. On the other hand, the profit that one might bear or brag on it, sums to a large zero. Can't take one iota of it into death.  It is likely in some eyes negative behaviour to see it that way, but in this world that awards dollar signs as pleasures, it does add up to a simple zero. Everything one does, sees, feels, spends, labours over, gives, prays about, builds, and or destroys totals zero at the moment of our last breath. Pessimists snarl that is wasn't worth it, while optimists laud each and every step down the twisted road of life. Then again, if we didn't travel this road, we didn't live. If we look as we travel the road, we find something called memories. They are us, what we are and what we were and who we were. Every single life has meaning and value. We are all part of this world that turns and we don't feel the movement, that wears away and we don't like it, that provides for us and we forget it, that we  abuse and go on,  that offers everything a human creature could possibly want but we don't really see it until it's too late. The mountain high pile of memories both bad and good collapse when we die, but not before we sort through it and in our regret to leave it, find the treasures we most loved. Some dwell on the bad and hard parts, and that's sad because in every life, there has been  good and beautiful and true. The other day, an elder friend said after her life recollections, "it will be a relief to die". Was her life about carrying a burden she forgot to drop? Or?

The Big Move

 There is most often The Big Move and it means for many, into something called a "home". I add the quotation marks because they aren't homes as we knew them. They are useful and beneficial places where those who don't feel confident about their needs being met in their own homes, make this choice. I am on the doorstep of a "home" and it isn't an easy decision. At this point in my life, my ninetieth year, I continue to enjoy mental acuity and good health other than a knee joint that makes every day a take-the-pain-pill. I use a cane or walker. I am often told the age-old "you don't look your age" which is kind of flattering, but rather untrue. It isn't how one looks, it's  how one feels that matters.  Mobility issues don't affect everyone at this stage, but it is an aspect that causes one to avoid getting out and about because it has layers of difficulty.  Also, dizziness to a degree comes along, too. I am an optimist but also a realist, and I go about with caution because I have witnessed the results when some of my contemporaries have misjudged their movement abilities, and have fallen. Often times, that means a fracture: hip or ankle or some other bone. It can cause unwelcome restrictions in getting about. My cane is a nuisance, but it is also a saver. The much maligned walker, likewise, is a friend. Why some elders refuse to use these wonderful tools that really do help, is beyond  me. Being old, is perfectly okay because we all do it, eventually. As an old work mate used to say in difficult times: "Oh, well now". That little phrase was her go-to for any uncomfortable situation and for her, it worked. She merely moved on past whatever was happening, and chose to leave it be. Oh, well now.