Sometimes me “thinks”…

…it’s possible that so many of the problems and struggles we face today is not that things are too hard but rather that they have become too easy.

While in Philly, I was struck with several things. The beauty and history of the buildings and museums, the magnetism for the arts, a time that I can’t understand yet have great curiosity about, the difference that one person can make. More on him in a minute.

It’s more than a few changes over the years. I think that for all our advancing we’ve lost some precious things. I think we’ve largely lost the value of work and doing things with our hands. We take for granted how quickly and easily we can get anywhere and how little work it takes on our part to make it happen. While at the Franklin Institute Science Museum I walked through the train display. I instantly thought of my dad and my mind raced back to so many trips and vacations as a kid that involved trains. Few things in life bring that man more joy than old locomotives. I can understand his fascination, they are amazing machines.The concept of the train was a miracle, an amazing contraption that opened new doors and opportunities for everyone and they were no small feat. Just thinking of their construction is a brain bender for the times in which they were built. They changed the landscape of our nation, becoming the very heartbeat of its growth. Today they are a ghost of the past. But there was a time when this old engine would not have any dust on it. A time when its motion required the physical devotion and work of someone shoveling coal into its belly. A time when its contribution couldn’t be measured. A time when people talked with each other as they passed in the station or with the passenger next to them.

And then I think of how we get places today and my heart drops a little. Today we hop in our separate cars, talk on our private cell phones even when standing right next to someone, and never give a moment’s thought to what makes these things possible. It is just life as we know it. All the time saved with modern conveniences seems lost on idle things. Social graces have been replaced with social races. If our ancestors thought locomotives were an amazing and convenient item imagine what they’d think if they could see us today!

This building made me appreciate advances in medicine. The open dome at the top was the first place of modern surgery or so they say. The placement and openness was to maximize the day’s sunlight for working. I guess the patient prayed for good weather that day. The procedures used to be open to the public as well. This was an encouragement tool to help people see the benefits of medicine and its growth into a more modern world, a way to help them begin to conquer their fear of it. I’m not sure I would have done too well with that. But I am still struck by the beauty of the building and it’s surroundings. I would never have pegged it as a hospital. That’s got to be a sure sign of changing times. Hospitals are anything but places of beauty or majesty today.

As we explored this amazing city and its many historic buildings and museums I was struck with the ornate detail on the old buildings. You don’t see that anymore. What’s even more amazing is to contemplate this workmanship being done by hand. I don’t think there are very many things today that are done by hand at this grand scale. Now we have machines and mass production of nearly every element in construction - even at the level of producing the tools that help construct the buildings. Workmanship this ornate and detailed has long since been replaced with sleek and inexpensive materials. It seems we’re in such a hurry to just get things built or finished that we don’t pay any attention to details anymore. What used to be considered an art itself, building in our day has become a nearly robotic process. Sometimes I long for the those little details that added so much character, personality and beauty. I can’t even begin to imagine the feelings of pride and accomplishment that came from building something so beautiful with your own two hands. City Hall was another manifestation of grandeur. The tour guide reported that at the time the work began it was promised to be the tallest building in the world. There was such pride in the process. But it was a great undertaking too. It was to be a masonry project using available resources of granite, marble and limestone - which is also the reason you can make out color differences on the tower’s exterior. But during the construction, steel was introduced and in short order the Washington monument and Eiffel tower would overtake the city hall tower as the world’s tallest buildings. But to this day it remains the tallest masonry building in the world. The detail and effort that went into this building have earned it such titles as “elaborate temple of local politics” which fits nicely if you’ve ever been able to see this building in all its glory.

But perhaps what I find the most intriguing is how times have changed the environment of working together. In 1752 the first North American property insurance plan was put into place for the protection and betterment of the people living in this early American town. The symbol was four hands connecting and supporting one another in a diamond shape. I love the message this symbol portrays. In my mind today’s symbol would be a single fist full of money wads. The organization was created by Benjamin Franklin and he named it The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. It’s a little sad to me that something created for the common good and which provided necessary help and protection has become such a money hungry and nasty business today. Insurance is now a necessary evil that you both can’t afford to have yet can’t afford to be without. Insurance companies now place the dictations and rules around what services can be done and who can perform them. They have become a very powerful and corrupted empire run by individuals - a symbol of so much of what has changed over the years. But that’s another soap box. What amazes me most is that one man brought together so many people and united them for universally beneficial causes - libraries, fire departments, and insurance organizations to name a few. It could nearly be said that the very opposite occurs today. Perhaps if we still had to work side by side to make things happen there would be more teamwork as existed in yesteryear.

You don’t appreciate what you don’t work for. That’s a simple truth. No wonder there’s so much waste in today’s world because we don’t have to work for things the way our forefathers did. Everything is so readily available to us - including lines of credit to purchase whatever our hearts desire. And at the end of the day we are left with debt and a sense of being hollow. The simple reward of seeing a day’s work with our own hands is robbed by the world of immediacy and ease.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m most definitely not complaining about how easy I have things today. I dearly love my microwave, car, cell phone, computer, Internet and a million other daily conveniences that make my life enjoyable. But I am noticing an important distinction between then and now. There is a lesson in the aftermath of modern tragedies that I think ties in with all of this and makes it very tangible to today’s world. Tragedy can bring unity just as scarcity did in early years, both producing a great deal of hard work and feeling of being connected to others. I continue to watch and listen in awe to amazing stories of growth, compassion and service that come about after major disasters. More and more of them are happening all the time on a broad scale of severity. When people are forced to rely on one another, to be brought back down to the most basic elements of sustaining, preserving and bettering life an instant connection to one another forms…magic happens. Too bad it takes these types of events to help us step back and realize the power of what lies within our grasp every single day. Maybe we’ve just become too complacent to recognize it.

You can look back and see amazing changes in the past couple hundred years. I wonder what future changes await and what people in those times will think/say about us today. I hope that with our changing times we can keep a steady eye on the good and important qualities of being human. And I secretly hope that we’ve mastered a way cool technology for transporting ourselves.

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