Our complicated lives

This photo of Makati is courtesy of TripAdvisor

I woke up the other day overwhelmed by the things I wanted to do. At first I intended to write a new post for this blog as it has been a week from now since I posted the latest article "Our obsession for the wealth that rust." But before opening this blog, I decided to open my email and saw a blog on how to earn online. Since it was sent by a person whose family name was familiar to me, I took a little time reading it.
When I closed my email, I saw this article on Yahoo! about aids research creating "spooky green cats." Finding it to be a good article for my other blog "Miscellaneous," I posted it there. Before I knew it, my wife had woken up. And then our 14-year-old daughter. I had to take my better-half to the hospital where she works as a nurse and our child to school afterwards before I go to work.
My cramped morning schedule illustrates how complicated my life has become since I left the farming village where I grew up with my uncle's family, having been orphaned at age 13. I assume that almost all of us - if not all of us - live complicated lives. Back then, after graduation from high school, I had a singular focus to graze my uncle's carabaos, Asian farm animals often referred to by some writers as "water buffaloes" because they have no Western counterparts.
A few days ago, a friend working as a magazine editor in Guam posted a wish on Face Book on how she wanted to quit her job because she is tired of her long rigorous working hours that deprived her of time to write more creative articles she wants to write. Another friend, a newspaper editor in Manila, told me last year that she had become tired working but just like anybody else she had to eke out a living. I knew many people are in the same situation.
I am in the same box. That makes me think at times where life is heading. Civilization, our journey from the caves to the modern sky crappers, is supposed to make life easier, but it has made our lives more complicated. Industrialization in particular has turned our world into a factory where each of us has to do repetitive tasks. I find the factory to be an apt analogy on how industrialization has compartmentalized our lives.
When I think of civilization I often hark back to life in the farming village that I left behind because I find a parallelism between my journey to the city and humankind's travel to the world that we live now. I am sure that, just like many of us, our ancestors dreamed of a better life. Their dreams led them to discover that friction can produce light and, in turn, led us to new caves - the cubicles in our offices where we do repetitive works.
I am not saying that we have not benefited from civilization. Without civilization we could not have aircons to cool our homes and offices. We could not travel in just a few hours between Jeddah and Manila when we take our annual vacation. If not for civilization, the Saudis could not have tapped the oil beneath their deserts and I could not be writing for this blog through which I share my thoughts, serious or silly, to anyone who would care to listen.
But are we happy with our lives, much happier than our ancestors? Probably, many of us are. But I'm sure there are as many of us who are not. A few days ago, I was appalled to read about the increasing suicide rate in China. The report said that those who decided to end their lives could not cope with the pressures of their day-to-day living. It was reported recently that about 26.2 million Americans are living in poverty.
Whether we admit it or not, majority of us are living hurried and harried lives. This is the price of civilization which brought us modern technology and hasten the pace of living. The rate race, as we now call our fast-pacing lives, has put tremendous pressures on many of us and at times make us hark back to the simple life we used to have. But alas! the river of life in which we are travelling doesn't allow us to go back to the past.
I work as an alternate opinion editor with the Saudi Gazette and a few days ago we received an online response to an article on women complaining about the high-cost of going to the gyms. He laid the blame on the women who chose to take office works and had to go to the gyms because they have become obese after leaving the household chores to the maids. Although the response was more of a pun, it depicted a real-life situation.
If you feel like we are on the same boat, welcome aboard.


Please visit my other blogs Viajero http://www.viajero-funtravel.blogspot.com, Miscellaneous http://www.miscellaneous-oddnews.blogspot.com and Fun in Life
http://www.salt-funstories.blogspot.com.