Do You "Know" What You Have?

Do you know what you have? Seem like a strange question? Think about it for a bit.
If you have a cell phone in your hand right now you have something that not only didn’t always exist in much of my lifetime but for many years only the elite could afford. Can you imagine explaining to someone of 30 years ago what you can do with your phone today? What seems so mundane and a normal part of life was not even considered when I was a child.

Do you own a color TV? I know that some of you whippersnappers are saying what does he mean a “color” TV? When I was a child only the elite could afford color TVs. In fact for many years, if you had a TV at all you were considered well off. More than 1 TV? Not even a consideration for many families when I was a child.

Do you listen to music on an Ipod or some other electronic portable device? If you didn’t have a record player in my youth (with a good needle) and you were lucky enough to have a transistor radio and could actually pick up a radio station that was your form of entertainment with music. If you were really well off you had a record player and even some records.

Do you have running water? Silly question right…..well in my youth there were houses that did not. Frankly, there are many third world nations even today that do not have running water in houses. Do you have a washing machine? You guessed it…..many could not afford to own their own machines for many years. Laundromats were a real hopping business.

Do you have a car? (or 2 or 3 or more!) Again, if you were lucky enough to own one years ago you were pretty popular. Now teenagers have their own cars….unheard of not that many years ago.

If you are reading this you have some sort of web enabled device that allows you to read it along with an internet connection. Not that long ago having your own internet connection was very expensive and only the elite had it not to mention their own computers.

Do you have a loaf of bread in the kitchen. Believe it or not, it wasn’t that long ago most people actually had to bake their own bread if they wanted it. My wife eluded to me a while ago that she didn’t even know sliced bread existed until she was 6 or 7 years old!

You can look in any room you want and really look around and think about all of the things we use every day that didn’t exist that long ago. It’s quite amazing if you really ponder it. Where we have come with plastics and manufacturing is astounding and you need not look far to get a sense of that. Try it sometime….look at your desk or your car or your office or school and think about the everyday things you use and do and research 20 or 30 years ago….you will learn that although we have a lot…..we really do not know what we have.