As a kid, I remember starting at the clouds in the sky without a care in the world. During long road trips, I would stare upwards for hours creating stories for the ever-changing, ever-moving, lighter-than-air, fluffy, wispy, cotton-like cushions of the heavens. Great whales would collide with fluffy white pigs (pigs can fly!), long wispy swordfish-like creatures would jet through the sky, two giant heads would occasionally meet - sometimes kissing, other times merging together to form something new just waiting to be brought to life.
There are days now when on my drive home I'll look up at the sky for a few moments (at a red light). As I watch the clouds, they seem so new and unfamiliar; clouds that I've known since I was a kid seem unfamiliar! I realized one day that this was due to the fact that with the increasing exposure to the media and constant innovations of technology, we're taking for granted the simple pleasures of life. Watching a tree dance in the wind, watching the rain fall in a constant yet irregular rhythm, watching the clouds create art on the canvas that is the sky; these seem to be becoming lost on us. Television, the internet, smart phones, and tablets seem far more entertaining than Nature (Nature as viewed by our eyes and not through a screen).
As an (almost) electrical/computer engineer soon to join the very industry that generates these innovations and inventions, I often wonder about the consequences. We live in a ridiculously fast-paced world where simple pleasures are considered a waste of time; it's simply not efficient. And while some of us may complain about how obessesed the world has become with efficiency, we all love the benefits of it. In other words, we may be cogs in a machine, but we're also the consumers of what the machine produces.
I just hope that with the constant advance of technology we don't forget about the simple pleasures of life. I hope we realize that there will always be more to life. And I personally hope that I never ever get myself into a state of mind where I find staring at clouds boring and a waste of time.