technology

I really struggle with technology.  I keep thinking that its just moving so fast I can’t keep up.  In reality, though, I just don’t bother keeping up because it requires my time and patience to learn stuff I don’t know.  And my time, and my patience are already taxed and limited commodities.

The problem is, that I am not bothering to learn it because my kids can do technology for me.  I don’t actually know the difference between downloading and uploading.  And the fact is, I actually don’t care either.  It takes practice (that means time and patience) to learn something.  The older I get I’ve noticed, the longer most things take.  Like making myself cute in the morning.  It used to take about four minutes, but now, its taking more like forty minutes.  And that is with a magnifying mirror.

I digress. 

Technology flips the tables of the natural order of things, I think.  It takes me half the time to clean a bathroom or the kitchen or make a bed than it takes me to teach my children how to do it.  But I know that it’s important to learn these skills and foster good habits.  But with computer stuff, I don’t have to do anything at all.  My children are light-years ahead of me with all of it.  I don’t really have to apply myself or think at all. 

But I won’t always be able to rely on them to do my computer stuff, operate my camera, turn the DVD player on.  One day I may be on my own, and it’s possible that when that day happens, I’ll never listen to another piece of music or watch a DVD or take a picture ever again. 

I’m okay with that.  But, I try to practice, to stretch myself just a little bit with the technology thing.  Not because I like it or because I want to or because one day the kids will all grow up and move out and I won’t be able to phone them and say, could you just drop whatever busy thing you have on your plate and come over to download or upload or something my pictures?

No.  I just think I need to practice the habit of learning something new.  I just need to develop habits and hone skills my whole life.  We are called “practicing Catholics” because we spend our life practicing the things that help us to become holy, we are developing the habits here on earth that will aid us en route to heaven.

We don’t learn computer skills by buying a computer and saying, okay, now I am going to be a computer person.  There.  I used to phone Sparky at work back in the olden days of 1992 and ask him how to turn the computer on.  Then he would tell me what commands to type in.  Those were the same olden days when I was grappling with how to pray.  And I learned, a little at a time. 

I learned who Christ was, day by day.  I read about Him, I developed my relationship with Him.  I talked with others about Him.  I practiced.  In my prayer life, in living sacramentally, in asking what it was God the Father had in mind for me.
Every day and every week, I try to learn how to do one little thing on my computer.  How to make a new folder.  How to create a link.  How to make the picture go from my camera to my computer with a little plastic card.  It’s nothing short of a miracle.  Not the transfer of information, but my ability to perform this little function.  I get frustrated and I’m not that good at it.

And every day and every week I try to find out what it is I can do to grow toward God and to know what it is He wants from me.  He guides me and sometimes  I listen well and sometimes I don’t.  I get frustrated and I’m not that good at it.  But a little bit every day, every week and I’m not the same person I was twenty years ago.  We accomplish, through practice, through perseverance and suffering, to grow toward God and change without realizing that it is even happening.  It’s nothing short of a miracle.