We have truly become spoiled as a society and I for one am not apologetic at all, I am appreciative of it. I think we have never lived in a better era and as a 44 something year old I feel very fortunate to have grown up through a time when we transitioned from the Library, manual labor to the Internet and artificial intelligence.

Don’t get me wrong, I am appreciative for the very fact I have experienced both and understand the ease in which my life has been afforded because of these developments, but what I am sad about is for the children growing up today not knowing any difference and they are truly missing out. I was drawn to a comment a coworker shared with me a couple of years ago when at a school Christmas party a child won a AM/FM radio. The child was fascinated how it just played music without having to download anything, but then the million dollar question came “So I don’t like this song, how to I skip to the next song” apparently it was mind-numbing to the kid that you would either have to switch channels and look for a song you liked or just listen to the whole song and wait for the next one. “Why would anyone do that” he asked. He went from excitement of this new gadget to complete disappointment. Disappointment! C’mon kid, you don’t know disappointment. Try growing up loving music as I did. We had a TV show called RTR countdown where they gave you a 1 hour show (only on Saturday’s at 6pm) where they would count down the top 40 songs in the country. A 1 hour show equates to roughly 15 songs (but then you add in commercials) so really only 10 songs total would be played. They had to play the number 1 song weekly so then you have a 20% chance of perhaps seeing your favorite song. The pain of watching your favorite song hit the number 2 spot for 3 straight weeks and not see it because “I guess it just wasn’t their time” was excruciating. Now you want to see your favorite song, just Youtube it! Oh how easy the kids have it today. But see, this is where appreciation of knowing what you had to deal with and what you have today is so important. I am able to go back to my youth at anytime and Youtube “Forever Now” by Cold Chisel and there is in full 80’s glory.

I guess what I am saying is I want the kids of today to have to suffer a little as I did growing up. I do think it gives you an appreciation of what we have, and honestly a little disappointment is a good thing, it helps us to take things in stride when things don’t go our way, something that appears to be a foreign concept to a lot of people out there today. The one thing I am thankful for is that the kids of today still share with us old folks is that Music is still a very important part of our lives, we break up to songs, we make up to songs, we fall in love with songs, and we fall out of love with songs, and that is something we will always be able to find common ground, even if they didn’t have to listen to the radio for an afternoon to hear that song once (with finger on the record button the whole time and then the DJ messed it all up talking to the post) haha!