Heaven...just a click away?

When I was little I imagined heaven to be a sunny window seat with lots of cushions placed in an endless library with an equally endless supply of fresh crisp apples. Spending eternity reading and learning everything I wanted to know was as close to perfection as I could imagine.

As I grew and the world around me changed, I added a movie screen to my heavenly room. I wanted this movie screen to show real events that had happened in the world. I wanted to be able to see and experience events I had not been around for. I also wanted to experience things I might never have a chance to here, like...Broadway plays...a night at the Met...watch how movies are made, etc.

A little older and I decided that the ability to see places and to meet people from all around the world must be added. Circumventing the globe might not be something I could manage in my life time but I wanted to. If I couldn't do that in life, well, I'd settle for doing it in heaven.

Add a few decades and a whole lot of moves and a new heavenly requirement popped up. I wanted to be able to keep tabs on people I have cared about throughout my life. I just kind of wanted to know what they were up to and how their families were.

Now my regular readers know that I'm not a huge fan of today's technology. I have seen it's devastating effects first hand. I have clung tenaciously to some of the “good old ways”. So imagine my surprise this week when I realized that I have fallen in love with my computer and it's capabilities! I still can't believe it but my laptop is all the things I wanted to find in heaven. It is an endless supply of places, people and things I will never see or do physically! It is a never ending supply of information and knowledge! Social media gives me the chance to check on loved ones regularly.

What brought me to this epiphany, you ask? A week of 110 degree weather, my very old double wide and a lousy air conditioner. I literally spent the week in front of a fan and on my laptop. Yes, I'm on my laptop everyday. Usually I check out the news, my blogsite, facebook and not much more. The past few months have seen me using it to look up specific info on things I want to know (a new talent). But desperation and sweat drove me to new Internet heights.

I introduced myself to Amy Winehouse's music which I loved (especially in her early years) and watched her devastating slide from a beautiful fresh faced girl with enormous talent to the empty slurring shell of the woman she had become. I watched a number of Broadway plays, old and new. I finally saw a live performance of “Sweeny Todd”. It was so much better on stage than on screen. I learned a bunch of songs from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and watched a stage performance (not better than the movie).

I went on an African Safari, visited a few zoos, checked on the latest Bigfoot sightings, saw both the 10^th and 25^th live concerts of “Les Miserable”, read up on a number of medical breakthroughs, watched the happy homecomings of a bunch of returning soldiers, looked for a job all over the country, read up on some laws (especially overtime regulations because Brent's new company refuses to pay it even when they have worked him over 70 hours a week).

I've spent time keeping track of an old friends newborn grandson born with a number of health problems and other friends and relative lives. My daughters hooked my husband on “Mythbusters” and me on “My Strange Addictions”. I learned that I'm not as crazy as I thought and that we did go to the moon!

On Facebook a few months ago, I saw something like this, “If a person from the fifties came back today,what would be the hardest thing to explain to them?” The answer was “That we carry a device in our pockets that hold all the information of the world and we use it to look at pictures of cats and to argue with strangers.” I laughed at the irony of this statement. But I'm realizing now that I too have not fully appreciated what I have at my fingertips. I have what I thought I'd have to wait until heaven to gain- an endless supply of information and knowledge with just a click of a button.

This isn't always a good thing. The information can be false, the paths we take can be evil but as with all things it it left to us to chose for ourselves. My biggest concern is that now I've made this discovery, how am I going to tear myself away to do my normal living? Oh, well... That's the view from my side of the street, what's yours?