Whats on the news? Whats on twitter? Where is my morning paper to go with my coffee?We even have applications on our phones that intuitively aggregate the type of news we want to know every morning,whatever is new out there,we want to know!!!; The modern way of life is fast.We all seem to be in a hurry to get somewhere,resolve something, or even just say something.We have come to accept this as being a passionate expression towards the things that we desire.I remember an incident when a friend forgot his mobile phone at home;the gentleman was an anxious wreck through out the day,behaving like a "junkie" in withdrawal.
Yes,this is what it has come to,no one has taken the time to understand why we all seem to be getting caught up in this trend.
Damals, in my days at junior high school,we had hardly ever heard of a mobile phone,we took pleasure in the ability so sit down by a desk in a classroom,draft letters to our parents,friends and even prospective better halves,then patiently endured the wait for replies to our letters.It was fun,we had pen-pals from overseas with whom we exchange letters,wrote about life in our respective settings,much to the amusement of our pen-pals.
As amazing and old school as this practice would seem in the modern setting,this practice encouraged the development of writing skills in school going children. In his school days,my young brother once wrote to me,much to my amusement, a letter written completely in perfect Chewa,all the grammar was top notch and it dawned on me as to the kind of influence letter writing had on general writing skills.
However,the positive valuation nowadays isn't about grammar, its about who said it first, who broke the news,and somehow,we have all been sucked into the belief that if I hear it first,then I will have an advantage on everybody else,no matter what advantage that is.A fast scan of what is in the papers or even on televised news reveals even more surprising realization,the so called News is dominantly just an announcement of what bad thing has happened,will happen,might happen,should happen etc The correlation between such news and our behavior towards news may only be properly analyzed by our colleagues in the psychology profession, I however suspect that the outcome is just as bad as the news itself.
With all the bad news being ingested into our systems, we have become desperate to get an advantage with a hope we can use this advantage to avoid the "bad" definitively reported by the news.
The mention of "Good News" often brings in the Bible, for those of us of a Christian persuasion, it is news that brings hope and encouragement for those feeling down and defeated, in short good news works towards uplifting our general well-being. The biblical good news also brings forth age old wisdom that there is a time between the planting of a seed and the time of harvest, a farmer must nurture his crop during this period, exercise patience anchored on the hope that the harvest shall bring forth great success.!
This wisdom holds true even in our modern high paced lifestyles, the natural order of things still requires us to exercise patience for our food to grow and eventually find its way onto our plates. Its a given,attempts have been made to speed up this growth phase through the engineering of crops into early yield crops, even fast maturing poultry. Whilst scientists will tell you that such genetically modified crops have no impact on our bodies, the banning of GMO foods in Zambia brings the spotlight on the fact that the natural order of things must not be tampered with just for us to satisfy our addiction to speed.
As we all read this, think of the number of times you have glanced at your Facebook or twitter today, what news did you get from it and what value has that news brought you? Imagine this, nobody tweeted about Zambia's gaining of independence in 1964,yet citizens still got the news and managed to travel for the festivities, nobody tweeted or facebooked about the time you were born(some of us) yet,here we are doing just fine and every relative and those who mattered knew about it.Imagine the many other things that have happened the world over which you don't know about,do they all matter that you should know them instantly?
There is a time for everything,a time for planting,a time for weeding,a time for harvesting,a time for celebration, this cannot all be the same time,Jahreszeiten or seasons are part of the natural order of life.We must not expect to harvest when we are in a planting season.Patience is a virtue!
It most certainly is
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