Importance

Big rocks first.

weeds and sand will cram and creep in over time.

We are unable to face silence and serenity! or patience and perseverance. We have to exchange our inner for outer, what’s intrinsic and intangible for countable and measurable. Welcome to the age of monetizing and materializing everything: Costco carts or our garages, non-empty bookshelves and cupboards.

BTW, the iPhone is celebrating its 15th birthday. A lot of apps, one for each of our whim. No wonder time escapes us (onto the other side of Steve Job’s mirror). Even Steve Jobs himself once posed for a photo in a room scarcely furnished . He definitely brought us a gift out of those undistracted meditation (if not making a dent in the universe) e.g. calligraphy.

Of late, I don’t see a lot of “think different”. It seems as though we’re still in 1984, still with a need for a sledgehammer (Apple Olympic ad showed an Olympian woman running in slow motion, tore through the screen: Think Different).

Decades have gone by with “paradigm shift”, “out-of-the-box”, “next level” “radical” ” compassionate conservatism” “pushing the envelope” only to find: Donald Trump is still babbling (despite his unseen elongated nose), Amtrak still operates with “Hell-on-Earth” derailment and better-life seekers and kids still died of dehydration on a deserted San Antonio stretch if not in school nearby in Uvalde.

Where have all the brains gone? Big Rocks? Best and Brightest? Think tank did not go to war and back in flag-draped aluminum coffins (easier for cross-ocean transport). Big picture kind of folks, behind the partition glass, behind the cushion and bullet-proof “Beast”. Get the apps out there, have a door dash lady picks up a sandwich for another lady. Voila. Scale it up. Money in the bank.

Winners and losers in the digital age. iPhones and Instagram, Samsung and social media.

You’ve got it!

Next frontier? Rare earth in Kenya, chips manufacturing in Taiwan (very much like Roger Moore’s Gold, the movie – set in S Africa back in the 60’s).

Every age has its own Archilles’ heels and opportunity costs. Ours? face-to-face interaction and environmental degradation.

Every force brings about an opposite reaction.

Fill it up with sand, you’ve got no room for big rocks.

Fundamental habits. Best practices. Then again, the arc of Wall Street i.e. Other’s People Money, casts a long shadow on stretched risk-tolerance and spread-out porfolio.

Then Others’ People Time and Energy. Just disintermediate them by being paradoxically in the middle of electronic transactions. We will always have the credit card issuers, the Amazon contract drivers etc. besides the recommendation apps.

Scaling and surfing. Go with the flow and fluidity of money, technology and trend. Small is not beautiful. Whites are (as once shown in Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous).

If preferable, it’s “suburban women”.. all the way: to the suburbs in the South, the boondocks, the KKK. To protect and preserve.

Yesterday’s “box”. Yesterday’s power. And of course, yesterday’s coffer. Why do you think there have been war after war after war. All in the name of a higher abstract notion e.g. liberty and justice for few. Now, please raise your hand.

The very hand that counts pennies, small change and Peter pence. No big rocks. No gold bars and no chunk of change at Chase bank. No wonder our time, energy and money all spent, like sand, filled up then swept away at first storm. Poofs! Ghost work. Ghost compensation.

I am back to checking my iPhone now. The app symbol is “f” (after the weather). No matter how anti-social I have tried to be. What big rocks! Steve said to stay hungry and curious. Well,..Out of curiosity, let’s check back in when the iPhone turns 30.

Let me guess. Faster internet, lonelier planet.