Curse of this Generation

After 25 years of my life, I made a visit to a different country in a different hemisphere. Most of my youth, it had been a dream to travel around the world. But interestingly enough, as the date of my journey approached, the emotions of anxiety and excitement were crowded, and subsequently shrugged away by more quotidian commonplace tiresome tasks. I still remember I wasn't as euphoric as I should have been, or at least, as I had hoped to be. Clouds of indifference were looming over. It wasn't even a subtle emotion (or I should say, a lack of emotion) from the depths, that took some days to air - the realization was quite clear, quick and distinct. The moment of epiphany struck at the layover in Munich, when I looked around to see that everything seemed like the New Delhi airport. I expected something to be different, I mean imagine if I would have been an explorer couple of centuries ago, harbors would have definitely looked something different, the color of the roads, people's attires, I mean, architecture, culture, and what not. But this globalization thing has smoothed the world for us, averaged the stuff out. If not entire countries, at least the airports and shopping centers. Every airport looks the same.

But then, it wasn't that absolutely everything was the same. It wasn't actually. It was just that I had seen it all. Even before stepping out of my house, one could say. On the internet or the TV, of course. 

That is the curse of this generation - as a species, as a living thing, we have completely missed out on certain feelings.

I mean Buffalo is, if you come to think of it, extremely beautiful, and quite so different - colors of the fall and spring, snow in the winters, architecture, people. That duck you saw in cartoons. That with the white ring around its neck and greenish face. It exists and looks the same. The graveyards, the creeks, the serendipities. Spring does get more beautiful than any of the wallpapers I have seen, and that is saying something. And that is the problem, I have probably seen all the colors that the eye can see. 

I have seen all the shapes and geometry, all the tall buildings, from all the point of views. I had already seen that huge T-Rex and those dinosaur remains in that museum in New York. Sure, there is some excitement, but imagine the feeling if I had never seen it before.

Once back in the day I was minding my own business, walking back home from the market, when I met an old friend, absolutely unexpectedly. Imagine that feeling of amazement and happiness, but how damped, how diluted, it must have been? Because we never really lose contact with our friends or actually miss someone, do we? Because of the social network and internet. 

Imagine the time when someone traveled nine days and eight nights to meet an old friend or a relative. That feeling when one finally sees them, that feeling that I am incapable of describing. Or, when one doesn't find them at home or hear the news of their death, after that long arduous journey, that feeling of sorrow and loss. We can never experience it.

The human nature is essentially changing, and affects us in ways that will make you go insane if you start to ponder upon them.