Over-Obsessed with Relationships…REALLY???

~ “Oh my gawd!” said an older women with a southern accent, “That girl has been whining about her boyfriend for the past hour. Enough already!” she said

I was sitting at coffee recently and a young woman was sitting a few tables away with what was presumably her mother. For the better part of an hour she sat their complaining to her mother about things her boyfriend was “doing wrong”.

The older lady with the southern accent was sitting next to me and had gotten tired of being forced to overhear the endless tirade against the young man,

“I know young men these days are hardly the essence of virtue, but at a certain point you’ve got to realize there is more to life than sex” said the older lady to me in a whisper

It’s interesting how relationship-obsessed Western Culture has become in recent years. While people in the old world were generally trying to stay alive by getting their chores done; taking care of chickens, cultivating crops, and fighting famine….young adults in our era often act as though the only thing that is worth thinking about is relationship drama.

It used to be that only the aristocracy (the wealthier classes) had the leisure time to go about their day as though they were living in a Jane Austin novel. For the average person, there was too much work to get done to worry about relationship drama.

However, we have created a leisure society. With very few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of people in Western Society have a lot of time on their hands. We have so much leisure time that the average person watches television or stares at their smart phone for so many hours a day it is rather frightening.

Technology has given us the ability to sit around…..this is a luxury that past societies did not experience. It is a bizarre twist of fate, that we created technology in order to spend more of our time thinking about important issues, yet instead, the mass of people tend to do nothing interesting with their leisure time.

I know a person who works a lot of hours. When money was tight back in the day, he was often working 7 days a week, and between his commute and the hours he worked; he would often tack up 80 to 100 hours a week working…..it was pretty exhausting. In his free time though, he always found time to read, to study, and to reflect.

“There is more to life than dating and sex” he once told me, “When you’re younger, it seems like there is nothing more important in the world than romance…..but actually, when we consider the span of eternity, it reminds us that there is a whole lot more to life” he said.

In our addiction prone society, many young women and men demonstrate the same traits as alcohol addiction in their relationships; they are addicted to relationship drama. They thrive on the ups and downs of relationships, as though there is nothing more important in life.

Perhaps you think I’m wrong, but in my humble opinion there is a great wealth of ideas and thoughts to think about, but if we spend our every waking moment thinking about relationship drama, then we are just throwing our lives away.

Next week my first published book comes out, The Culture. It’s a science fiction novel I wrote as a way of discussing technology, the Internet, and community…..all of the subjects that are near and dear to my heart.

I realize that we can’t change our culture overnight, and in many ways we are stuck with what we got. But perhaps if we continue a dialogue about the best way to live…..that in the end, future generations will catch on and realign their thoughts about the things that matter most.

Just a few thoughts as I sipped my coffee,

Kenneth

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Single men are our GREATEST problem…REALLY??? ›

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Categories: Culture & Society

Tags: art, blogging, coffee, culture, dating, kenneth justice, marriage, monk, philosophy, photography, psychology, relationship, travel