Living in the Lap of Modern Luxury

You know, sometimes we really take for granted the modern conveniences that we have grown accustomed to having. I was just kind of warm a few minutes ago in my house, so I walked down the hall and turned the thermostat down a couple of degrees for the air conditioner to kick on. I was hungry, so I heated up some peas in the microwave and warmed up some fish in the oven – and in about 15 minutes, I was eating my meal. I wondered what was happening in the world of sports, so I turned on my satellite television to find my favorite baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, playing extra innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Then I decided to hop on the computer and check my electronic mail (via a cable internet connection wirelessly transmitted to my laptop).

And that’s when it hit me: I really have more than I could ever need or want materially. And I have almost all of it at my fingertips, needing just the click of a button to accomplish the most complex of modern tasks. I don’t usually give a second thought to the kind of luxury I live in even as a middle-class American. We (Americans and others in highly developed nations) are downright spoiled.

I daresay that if a man or woman from the 18th century were somehow transported into a medium-sized town of middle America in 2009, they would hardly recognize anything that looked similar to their life in the 1700s. Some of the person’s immediate thoughts might be: (1) To where are all these people going in such a hurry? (2) If this mechanical carriage goes any faster, I think I’ll vomit, and how do the drivers not constantly crash into one another? (3) There seems to be so many public eating houses, I wonder if anyone dines with their family at home. (4) I am seeing so many grocery markets, but not many farms to grow the produce. (5) Most people seem to live in absolute palaces – I wonder if they are members of the royal family. (6) Why are everyone’s children acting like little heathens? Shouldn’t the parents be whipping them instead of laughing? (7) All this noise and activity is making my head spin. I think I should lie down.

So next time you toss some bread in the toaster, or clothes in the dryer, or dishes in the dishwasher, or next time you hop in your car for a quick trip across town to get batteries for your TV remote, try to stop for half a second and consider that you’re still one of the first people in the thousands of years of the human race to have such luxuries at your instant disposal. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s a blessing or a curse.