Garlic is Minced

Garlic is minced. Sauce in jar. Carrots peeled. Garage door opens. TV by remote. Alexa answers. Books read aloud. Groceries delivered. Navigation rendered. Robot vacuums and mows the lawn. Shoes slip right on. Car parallel parks. Steps are counted. Doctor is online. Movies streaming. Pay check deposited. Caller ID, wireless phone. Camera ready- video too.

We may never have to leave the house-to bank or visit or grocery shop. Don’t need to bend to tie shoes, lift a garage door, turn a key, chop an onion. Don’t need to change the channel, leaf through a book, read a map key, take an encyclopedia from the shelf. Don’t need to vacuum, wash a dish, hang clothes on the line, send a handwritten note or spell correctly.

Car seats heated, steering wheel too, no need to feel hot or cold or anything for that matter. Air condition the heat and heat the cold. What has become of us human beings?

All of these small insipid conveniences may be changing our lives. Amenities are hoping to ease our busyness and give us more time, but instead we seem to have less time and even quiet lives seem too full.

I try to heed the call of the wild-the wind, the rain, the cold, the warmth-the sun energy feeding our souls. Feeling the earth beneath our feet-locking eyes with a white-tailed deer, getting our fingernails dirty. Giving the hairdryer and concealer a vacation, however brief. Flipping through tattered pages of well-loved books, fingertips touching the past. Opening the windows, if even just a crack, to let a stream of fresh air in and wondering what part of the heavens it may have filtered in from. Watching geese fly till they’re out of sight and feeling their ‘flight call’ somewhere within. Sensing our kinship to all of life. Yes, to know that we indeed are human beings-but we are also human doings-or better yet we are part of one family under one sky – to sing and dance and run and jump and touch and feel and be.