In with the Old, Out with the New
My grandma and I often talk about the difference between life when she was young versus now.
She fondly revisits old stories she’s remembered over the years, while I am usually cynically talking about how fucked up my generation’s priorities are. We agree that back in the day appliances and clothes were made to last. Antique furniture and Corningware dishes have held their value over decades in her home.
Grandma has spent nearly everyday of her adult life in the kitchen, by choice. She makes food with all the love that can fit in a biscuit. She carefully peels every potatoes’ skin with a sharp knife and picks out every piece of crab meat from the shell. So much time goes into every dish she makes. The most important thing to grandma is that everyone is fed. She would even keep crackers and water bottles in her car to pass out to homeless people before it was illegal to do so. She’d take breaks to go cool off so it became the family joke that grandma was always hot because she was always cooking. I have vivid memories of her with a fold out paper fan blowing air toward her face as sweat glistened, curling the hair at the base of her neck.
My generation attempts to do everything in the shortest amount of time possible. We prep our meals way in advance so that they are easy to grab when we are on the go. Most of the time we multitask while we eat, or barely take a moment to really enjoy our mealtime. Hardly any attention is paid to the food, and no one ever really offers a prayer or gratitude even for the preparation of the meal. The ritual of eating was deemed an insignificant part of the process for so long because our lifestyles could not be disrupted.
Most of us work jobs that provide us with no product and just more computer skills. The less time we utilize for our bodies’ sake, the quicker we move into the metaverse. These vessels will likely make it far into the future, if we don’t wreck them before they have the chance to evolve. To me, the body is a representation of Earth and the mind is a representation of this logical internet driven world we created. Together, they could make quite the pair, but working out of sync feeds only one at the expense of the other.
Funnily enough, my grandma is a cyborg. She has a pacemaker and a replaced hip and shoulder so her doctor calls her the bionic woman. Those craftsmen of yesteryear built sturdy mechanical parts to assist the earthly body, and this is a great example of how we can incorporate technology into the physical realm. My issue with the metaverse is that it has the hallmarks of a science fiction story where people get stuck in a world that can provide their bodies no nourishment.
Originally written in Collective Journaling at The Stoa
