DO you ever look up at the clouds?
Not to check the weather, just to look.
I used to do it a lot as a kid, seeing what was happening up there, just to see what I could see – or imagined I could see – floating past on a daily basis.
You’ll notice I slipped that word imagination into the conversation.
Of late I have been wondering just how much imagination there is left in the world because some of the people I have been talking to of late have done little to inspire me.
And I’m not saying it just because they are young – these days if you are sub 60 I classify you as young. But seriously, I was talking to a couple of the young blokes we have working with us, and it was pretty hard to (as they all seem to say these days) ‘engage’ with them – because they didn’t have a lot to say.
About anything.
I had actually gone over to have a quick word because I was a little concerned about their communication skills in emails about things happening on their patch during the day.
And their total lack of response to any requests for clarification.
Remarkably, they seemed somewhat surprised I would make the trip – we’re only talking about 15km in total there and back – to discuss the problem.
“You could have sent me a text,” one of them said.
I had already tried that, to no avail. It seems they all love having their phones but insist on having everything turned to silent, so it doesn’t annoy them. It might not annoy them, but when I want an answer, it annoys me.
Which gets me back to those clouds.
And a lot of the things we did as kids because our imaginations were the digital world.
Ideas and entertainment didn’t flood onto little screens and provide non-stop entertainment without us having to ‘engage’ a single grey cell.
I might have mentioned this to the lads in question, in a slightly roundabout way, but they simply did not comprehend what I was getting at.
Although one of them did scoff politely, albeit slightly mockingly.
“Ah, yes, Whacker,” he began.
“I know what you think of all of us with faces stuck in phones on trains and while sitting around, but I have seen really old photos from the 1960s and ’70s (see what I mean, no grasp of time or tide. Really old. Seriously) and everyone on the train had their face buried in a newspaper.”
He had a minor point but had missed the target completely. And as expected.
For a start, most of the news in those newspapers could be trusted because it had been written by someone who could read, write and spell and every word in it had been fact checked, been through a sub-editor and if important enough, through an editor and a gaggle of lawyers as well.
It wasn’t immediately seized by a million other newspapers, reinterpreted, regurgitated and riddled with ‘fake news’ and downright lies.
And I don’t recall people coming around to visit, joining us for dinner at a restaurant or walking through the city streets with a newspaper open in front of their faces.
Nope, youngster. You have no idea what you are missing, have been missing and probably will keep missing because you don’t need any of your own ideas. AI and the algorithms will do that for you.
It kind of breaks my heart a little bit.
I know growing up in the city can’t possibly be as much fun as growing up in the bush, but the clouds are still there above us all.
It’s just a simple thing, to tilt your head up, let your eyes take in nature’s showcase and let your imagination run free about what might be happening up there if you choose to ignore the science and embrace the freedom, where your mind can run free.
The tough bit is that at night, when the clouds are replaced by the stars, the planets and the moon, it’s a lot harder to see in the city, too much light pollution.
Fancy living like that – I just can’t imagine it.
