We live in a world of unbelievable opportunities. If you have a phone, you have a wider reach that the biggest media company in the world did 20 years ago.
But you got used to it.
Running water, light at the flick of a switch, your garbage taken away and removed from your sight, and when it doesn’t work we get mad.
“Why is this damn light flickering.”
“Roadworks till the end of June, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
Forget that it takes multiple decades of infrastructure building, constant monitoring and hourly maintenance work to keep the post arriving, the internet connected and the water running. We expect it now.
Like when your friend complains about a 20 minute delay on the runway for their flight to take off. There’s something almost childish about complaining of a short delay before taking part in the miracle of human flight.
When we remember how amazing so many things are in our lives, and that three hundred years ago almost everyone on the planet essentially owned basically nothing, it gives us some perspective. That doesn’t mean that we don’t sometimes have hardship and tragedy, and it doesn’t mean that some of us don’t work really hard and get stressed at jobs we don’t like. Those are real problems and need addressing because we only have one life, and it’s not worth wasting it doing something we don’t care about.
But…
We don’t have to walk two and a half miles to work in the crouched position to go and break coal off a wall in a rickety mine, and come out age 35 with black lung from inhaling coal dust. We can flick a switch and the lights come on (most of the time) because of the amazing work unseen and unlauded hands do on our behalf every single day.
These aren’t small, they are everyday miracles that took hundreds of thousands of people their entire lives work to make all of these little things we are so fortunate to have supporting our lives so we can learn new things on YouTube, do a Zoom call with clients on the other side of the world or order a gift for a friend and have it wrapped and sent to them, next-day delivery!
So don’t get used to it, because it’s a gift from the people who came before us, and it’s truly amazing.