Isha Ghadge
Final year, B pharm
Think about it. What if we live from the perspective of our parents?
Almost all of our parents have lectured us on the overuse of technology from a very young age.
Frankly, we never gave any thought to what they meant by that. Technology has certainly provided us with a way to communicate with the world without effort, but as has been rightly pointed out, the excess of all is always detrimental. This world that’s filled with people using their eyes to just watch a screen and brains used only to search for answers in Google, has altered the global perspective of the existing.
The irony of this era is that humans who possess an intellect exceeding all other life forms have created a technology that slowly and gradually erodes away their own intellect. This may also be the reason why younger generations feel lost. We keep ourselves so busy inside the rectangle screens that we often forget to feel like a part of this world. The sense of anxiety and loss that consumed us all comes from the image that social media often creates. Judging the world through a pair of cynical glasses that technology has given us just makes it harder for us to really live our lives to the fullest. We cannot accept this fact if they have never sought to gaze into this immense landscape of immense beauty more than a screen can ever show us. I think that’s what our parents always wanted to tell us, to look at life from a different perspective, from a point of view that goes beyond the light on our screen. On many occasions, social media gives us the impression that we still need a reason to exist, which discourages us from not meeting our objectives.
But, with our dying breaths, we do not recall the goals we have achieved or the money we have earned, all we recollect are the moments we have lived. If this is what life is? Why spend it immersed in a phone or a screen?
So, this is what I personally came to terms with, never restrict yourself to a screen when you can feel the earth living and breathing in its entirety. Take a walk outside. Observe the trees with the birds perched on them building a life for their newborns, look at the sky switch colors from sunrise to sunset, and listen to the wind change direction throughout the seasons and then you might understand what I want to say. Take this all in and then use your imagination to create something so impossible that it defies all logic. You might not get anything out of it besides a good laugh but this too is a part of existing and is the greatest thing a human can learn. What meaning would there be to a life of endless scrolling and texting if it is going to result in a hampering state of mind?
That is what our parents want for us, to break the cycle and live life by conversing with people through our actual senses rather than with devices. Live your life through experiences rather than simulated games. As the gist of a poem or a story lies in reading between the lines, the gist of many things in life lies in the advice given by people who have witnessed the actual world rather than spending time on a screen. Maybe, one day you will look back on life and be glad that you lived by capturing memories rather than just capturing photos.