Magic Dust

Over the past week, I have spent time with "the people," a group of folks living in the foothills and mountains of east Tennessee and western North Carolina. Some of these people are family members of mine while others are long-term residents of the area. A few were tourists passing through or staying in towns I visited.

While there, I listened to their stories. Somewhere I have a handwritten collection of these new but familiar lives; however, the handwriting sits in another part of the house right now so I'll have to tell the specifics of those stories another time.

Meanwhile, these people continue to live their lives, from a high-density/high-value steel salesman rushing back to Wisconsin to a kid dripping ice cream in the heat of the sun.

I traveled to another place and time, back to the land where I grew up, and heard the echoes of ancestors long gone in the voices of people living today.

As a child, I had little input or major say in the workings of the local socioeconomic system. I was formed by it and contributed in small ways, such as door-to-door sales of trinkets to raise money for school events or civic duties carried out in the name of Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I mowed the lawns of widows, charging low fees and sitting down for an hour or two afterward, talking about life changes while sipping a cup of lemonade or cold iced tea. Such a childhood lifestyle may still exist there. I do not know.

Some of the large-scale employers that pumped money into the local economy have left or gone out of business. Many of the vibrant communities full of children have turned into established neighborhoods for retirees and the elderly. Signs posted in front of churches and community centers have changed from "Mom's Morning Out" to "Alzheimer's/Dementia Adult Day Care."

Some things haven't changed. The crisp mountain air still invigorates one's sense of being. Bays Mountain Park still has a planetarium (but updated the equipment to star/planet/video projections fancier than even the big cities have). Gem mines still operate roadside tourist flume mining. And people still have opinions they're not afraid to share.

I am generally happy but yesterday and today I have nursed a "blue moon" headache attributable to working in an open pit mine on Tuesday and moving small boulders to get to pieces of gemstones such as black tourmaline, aquamarine and ball garnets, stretching and contorting my back and neck muscles. A headache clearly indicates I am alive (for which I'm always happy to see) but obscures my ability to see into the future* [a joke I'll talk about later]. Plus, I have breathed in too many feldspar and mica particles from the dust stirred up while hammering on rocks, enflaming my nasal passages and affecting my ability to breathe clearly.

How do you reconnect to the natural world? Or do you even bother to cut yourself off from the electronic, virtual world?

I enjoy the benefits that global connectivity provides, rejoicing when websites broadcast the news of people protesting against inequality or laughing when someone sends me a funny email or video, but I don't stay connected all the time. Many people I know have fallen into the habits of being connected all the time, exhibiting traits of addiction when they "have to" get online because of physical withdrawal symptoms. From what I've seen, the world hasn't fallen apart when I've been disconnected. In fact, I think some people are glad not to hear from me, content that I take breaks from blogging occasionally.

Over the past few days, I listened to opinions that I didn't agree with and opinions I understood - seven billion people have seven billion different views - diversity in action, no matter whether it's governed, regulated, officially approved, frowned upon or outlawed.

From what I gathered in those opinions, there is no magic dust that will solve all the world's problems or make successful solutions even better.

Underneath our feet, we have many treasures, including coal, oil, water, gold, silver and gemstones. To get to the treasures, one has to do a little bit of work - the more people coordinating their activities around treasure hunting, the easier the treasures can be found and gathered, all while they hold completely different views about how the treasures will be used.

We only have this planet to live on right now. (Sure, we have dreams about reaching and colonizing the moon and other planets, which will happen eventually but for only a few dozen or hundred people in the next 50 years. For the rest of us, Earth is our home.) Barring any extraterrestrial interference, very little will interrupt our progress toward highly-interconnected societies, where we will more and more virtually see into each others' houses, lives and bodies. In other words, privacy becomes redefined but don't equate changes in privacy with changes in freedom. A transparent life available for view 24 hours a day is not the same as a life restricted from acting freely.

*I cannot see the future. What I have is what everyone else has, the ability to read and assimilate more material available at my fingertips than ever before. Plus I have freedom to write about whomever I wish to be, not held to a strict line of thought or reasoning tied to a particular moneymaking channel. I explore possible lives because I want to see life from many human perspectives. From my exploration, I imagine what a planet full of people I've imagined will be like in moments to come. In my imagination, easier to expand with my eyes closed but working all the time, I envision changes in the current population that reflect historic changes because the human condition is still the same, although it adds evolutionary changes (changes that build upon one another, not necessarily ones that have biological origins) and rarely any revolutionary changes.

For instance, we all have a past which includes biological lineage and cultural upbringing. We react to our past in different ways, with some people wanting to maintain a life within the bounds of ancestral behavior and some people wanting to overcome the restrictions of the past. Our reasons vary but can be generalized. Research institutes measure these generalizations in order to help organizations plan ahead, hoping to capture the attention of trendsetters or people in subcultures and use that attention for various purposes such as product sales and government changes.

Humans have a limited attention span - the more our attention is distracted, the smaller the span of our attention, leading to a culture of many who profess conditions such as attention deficit disorder but it doesn't have to be that way.

If you're going to work and play in the global connectivity space, do so with your opinions open to healthy changes but your goals and objectives always focused on yourself and your family. You are the most important person in the universe - I see that at all times but others may not because they've expanded their goals and objectives to include you knowingly or unknowingly to the exclusion of your goals and objectives. The global workplace/playspace gives more people a chance to pull you into their focus - be willing to listen to what they say because we can learn something new all the time but give yourself the room and time to be free to live your own life.

We all have stories to tell, every one of them important, even if others don't have time to listen. Don't stop telling your stories. Don't stop being you. In the Internet age, our lives become transparent and we're free to celebrate our lives with the rest of the world. We can work together to keep governments, corporations and other human organizations from restricting our freedom to be ourselves by celebrating each other's right to be, within the bounds of common courtesy and prevention of danger to others' lives, of course.