This past Friday I signed the lease on my own apartment. No roommates, just myself. It is both exciting and scary at the same time. It feels grown up to do the signing myself, and being the one person responsible for everything. In any case, it is a milestone in my life to have my first place.
Being a type of person that enjoys having a peaceful repose to retreat to when I need recharging, it was overwhelmingly calming to wake up this morning to the sound of rain and rolling thunder, and to sit on the couch with a bowl of cereal after a time of quiet devotion and journaling. It is highly rewarding to now be sitting here publicly journaling while some relaxing music plays from my office. I look forward to slowly building a home out of my apartment, through decorating and spreading out of my belongings, and that will be a great feeling of comfort to come to after a hard day's work or to end a good evening.
If there's any one thing I am nervous about in my own place, it is dealing with the inevitable sense of loneliness that will hit at times. So far I have been fine with that, as I have seen people each day in the past couple of days. Since I will be less busy during the first rotation of the year I will have many opportunities to spend time with people, and hope plenty of people will drop by to see the new place and also just to check it out. I think however, that having a private retreat to return to when I want will in some ways make me more purposeful about reaching out to other people.
Some time last week the History Channel was running a program on the future of technology. Several examples had to deal with the merger of technology with the human body. One example was the potential to place a piece of technology into the retina of someone's eye, enabling them to perhaps watch television without having to have an outside box. They showed a 'simulation' of a man seemingly listening to a woman talking and then from his eye view having a video screen partially obscuring her face. Oh, and in order to exaggerate the annoyance of her talking, she was being played in something of a fast-forward, high-pitched voice. In reality, the use of optics in the eye is more for the purpose of finding a potential cure for blindness, which is a far more worthwhile cause if you ask me.
Another example of technology was the program that could interpret brain waves as someone thought them and be programmed to perform certain computer functions based off of what the person 'thought'. Some of the actions however were also programmed via an eyebrow raise, a jaw clench, and so forth. The purpose was to provide quadriplegics who were paralyzed with a more sophisticated means of communicating beyond the current technology in place, which utilizes eye-blinking alone.
As a future doctor, I am more than excited to see technological advances that can restore any measure of function to the disabled. It does however make me thankful for my own feelings of wholeness. I have two arms and two legs that function, I have a heart with natural valves and no need for stents to hold open my arteries. I have hearing that does not require a hearing aid. I do require glasses for seeing things sharply at a distance, and it is at times a frustration to have to acknowledge that there is something about my body that does not work perfectly. As each day goes by however, I know that I only get older, and progress more towards the end result of the Curse: death. Thank God that someday an imperishable body awaits me.
I am disturbed by some showcased technology that this show had on. One example was the insertion of video/television media wherever you would like it, even rolling it up and taking it with you. It may only have made up a small amount of the whole hour, but to me it seemed to take up quite a bit of the programming. There were examples of fabric-thickness televisions hanging on a wall, in massive size using up the sides of skyscrapers, digital screens built into the counter and tabletops of living spaces. Eugene Peterson, the author of the Bible paraphrase The Message, mentions in an interview I read recently that he feels television has done more than anything else to degrade society. John Patrick, an English physician I heard speak at a medical missions conference in November, spoke about the lack of true learning that occurs via visual media, and that the deepest knowledge and learning comes through reading and the written word.
I enjoy some television, and I enjoy going to a movie as well. Those things are good, and it is beautiful a lot of times to see a story depicted through the eyes of someone's imagination. The Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Rudy, Finding Neverland most especially, are great stories that lose nothing by being put to film. I think what I really dislike is when television or movies become an escape from being able to interact with others, or tell the stories to others, or if there is a lack of imagination involved in the telling of any story in what is being watched. "Couch Potato" evokes a rather undesireable state of being in my mind, and I would much rather be engaged with people than be a numb consumer of visual imagery.
Right now, I do not own a television in my new apartment, and I have considered what it would be like to simply not own a television at all. Of course, that would mean being unable to watch my favorite show Scrubs, or watch what I consider good programming like HGTV or the History Channel or Discovery, but it would challenge me to do more engaging activities with my time. If it came to watching movies, I could easily watch them on my computer's DVD system. I have a couple seasons of Scrubs on DVD, and then there's always the opportunity to reach out and spend time with people in order to watch a movie with them. I could also simply catch up on all the reading I say I intend to do. I could write far more as I say I will. I could start that book I have always told myself I want to write. Or, if I end up with a TV, lose sight of those interests.
