Full Circle

As we age, we find previously outdated items coming back into vogue. Paisley ties, for instance. I can remember wearing them in high school (late 1960’s) along with paisley shirts. There may have even been paisley pants, but I’m pretty sure I never wore a pair. Countless other examples can be found in music and movies. Some things, though, don’t make a comeback. I’m thinking that the telephone, or at least its influence, is on the wane.

If you’re over 50 you can recall party lines and the “wonder” of long-distance calling. Your grandparents may have had a two piece phone or maybe even the old one piece with a crank on the side that hung on the wall. The telephone. What a wonder.

In earlier times one had to rely on hand-written letters from family members to stay connected and business correspondence, while centered on the typewrite, had to similarly rely on the postman. The advent of the telephone brought up to the minute news from far away that included items missing from the written word: inflection and emotion. The ringing of a phone conjured up imminent greetings from afar and household members would race to be the first to hear from the other end of the line.

Over the past twenty years or so, the phone has evolved from a beloved part of everyone's day into something to be avoided. Caller ID became the norm as we wanted to know who in the hell was calling before we committed to a simple “hello”. And email made it possible to avoid any conversation without going back to writing, stamping, and mailing letters.

Texting is now considered to be the accepted form of communication complete with a whole new lexicon. No superfluous letters or thoughts. Terse and pretty much unemotional, texting has been adopted by much of society as the best way to reach out and touch someone. Parents have gone so far as to say that they text because it is the only way to communicate with their kids. This leads me to wonder who the parent really is, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.

So, within in the last sixty years or so, we’ve gone from a reasonably isolated society to one that was better connected by the telephone to our current state where we choose to remain isolated by relying, once again, on the written word. It has become our choice rather than a necessity and it speaks volumes (pun intended).

I’ve often diagnosed society’s ills as resulting from a failure to share our convictions with others. In so doing, we adapt them to new information or adopt others. Our conviction feeds directly to our expectations and, if they are high, we expect more from our environment. And that is generally a good thing. Without high expectations the quality of our lives slowly, yet surely, declines as we recite the “it could be worse” and “at least I have a something-or-other” mantras.

Sending an email or text does not spell disaster for society, but using it as a first choice of communication won’t do us much good. Last week, I was at my computer and received an email from an old friend. I replied and received a reply almost immediately. OK, so he knows I’m home and available, but he continues to rely on his keyboard rather than dialing my number. (I replied once more, but refrained from a subsequent one to his next note.) Why didn’t I pick up my phone? Well, he initiated the “conversation” so I left it to him to decide. We both lost out though, I’d say, on the chance of a side note or segue into another topic. We didn’t share a laugh or a sigh or anything else of merit. A simple exchange of words with nothing added. Sad.

I can live with paisley going back out of style, but I mourn the continued erosion of our desire to hear another human voice and share thoughts and ideas different than our own. How else do we grow and adapt to the ever changing world around us?

Harry Chapin’s trademark song was “Circle” in which he described all things as coming ‘round again. I can’t help but see the old rotary dial on telephones of another era in thinking of never-to-be-had chats and the realization that this may be one instrument destined for obscurity.