Wake up and smell the roses.

As I left the office the other day, I chanced upon a little girl wearing a ballet tutu: she was holding tenaciously to the hand of a man. It was a scene right out Degas’ sculpture Little Dancer of Fourteen Years.(1) What was to be remarked on, unfortunately, was the demeanor of her father (I assume the man was her father). He had a blank, vacuous expression that could only be called disinterested to the point of disdain. The little girl seemed not to notice and bounced along in happy abandon as children seem compelled to do. “What was wrong here?” I asked myself. It was obvious that the man had missed the moment. We are afforded a limited amount of intimate occurrences in life and this individual had surely bypassed one of them: such a pity, such a tragic waste! I wanted to run up to the man and say, “Look! Look!” I didn’t, being reserved and polite. This whole scene led me to reflect on our “wakefulness.” Are we alive or are we just automata floating through temporal space waiting to be expunged. My observations would conclude less of the former and more of the latter. The answer most pundits believe is related to the Internet and more specifically social media. (2) We are slowly being “dummy downed.”(3)

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