Watching, Listening and Reading

The story headline in the New York Times yesterday was, “Youths are watching, but less often on TV.”

The story suggests that viewers 12 to 34 are spending less time in front of the television set and more time watching the same programs, but on the internet, mobile phones and other non television video outlets.

I fear that lazy watching of just video by the young requires less intellect and effort than reading and therein is their diminishment.

If we just watch we are un-informed. If we just listen we are un-informed and if we just read we are un-informed. To me it is the combination of all three that allows the mind to understand the complexities of life and find creative solutions to the seemingly unsolvable.

The past as it is embodies in the memory and experience of older generations is the repository of process and reading is one of its graces.

Listening is another grace as is eloquence and elegance. They are all cloaked in the gown of experience, but in the sharing of these two graces, the elders, the seniors, must be the evidence of them by example. Eloquence must be learned through the ear and elegance through the eye.

The young will always need the elder for context. The tribal story-tellers of the past have proven that.

Creativity needs all of the graces and all participants from the youngest to the oldest. It is then that the seasoned clay of imagination brings a youthful idea into form where it can be glazed by experience.