Journal 3- The Silk Route
Here I am- day 3 of my journal entry. Today was a Monday and since I am on a sabbatical of sorts, I had the whole Monday wide open. Its strange how long days can feel when you minimize/eliminate use of modern technology. Today felt like atleast 30 hours long to me.
In the afternoon, I watched two documentary shows on cable tv. One was about the ancient Silk Route from China to Venice via India, Turkey, Albania and a few others. I wonder if they were more connected to the world and felt more purpose in life than us? Imagine walking thousands of miles on your donkeys and horses in a caravan carrying essential items of trade. Night and day for months at a time. The adventure I can never feel. Actually, most of us cannot now. Everything has been explored already, written about and made accessible. Want to go from Istanbul to Venice? Just take a 2:30 hour flight. No sense of journey, community or exploration. I think what modern technology has done is the biggest disservice to mankind- it has eliminated a sense of community. If you had walked through the ancient silk route, you would come across these Serai (resting homes) every 50 KM apparently. People and their cattle stopped to rest, eat and drink. There are recorded accounts of people enjoying their time on the road so much that they settled at these serai's. They drank, sang and slept on their long journeys. This, I suspect, is what the homosapiens need but are being robbed off in the modern age. I am yet to find one account of someone making a friend on a plane journey. No one talks in planes anymore with each other. I mean why would anyone when you have Wifi now even in planes. We don't even bring our home cooked food on flights let alone share food. These are some of the thoughts that went through my mind most of the afternoon. If someone ever reads these journal entries, these are not some radical ideas of a deranged mind. I am merely poking at our human condition in the modern age surrounded by technology.
My evening and night were mundane. I imagine this sentence is going to be a common theme in my journal entries. I don't expect everyday to be something new- in cannot be. See you tomorrow.