Why I am not a fan of video games (or casinos)

It has been a good week.  I have actually managed to get up on time.. twice!  Go for a nice walk each day before work, get some sunshine and take another walk before bed. My FitBit has rendered its verdict with a nightly moment of buzzing affirmation as I hit my assigned 10,000 steps in 24 hours on, count them, TWO days in a row!   

More beneficial than the physical activity has been the spiritual experience of getting outside to start the morning off in a space without a phone or email.  With whatever I walk by or see to serve as inspiration, motivation, or a reason to shake my head in wonder (or confusion) at this crazy beautiful world.  

Today offered two such extremes.  In one corner, the Canada Geese performing day two of their migration.  For reasons I do not fully understand, great diamonds of geese have been flying northeast over Saratoga Springs each morning.  Always on the same heading, always about the same time. Some are small groups, maybe three birds.  A few are much larger, numbering in the dozens or hundreds. Some are perfect Vs, with minimal honking, soaring gracefully while other formations look quite amateur like.  These aerial bands of mall teenagers are completely out of order, struggling to keep it together, and continuously squawking to each other.  I imagine those to be the younger birds, those who just don't have it all figured out yet but who have to try.  They have no choice.  To survive they have to figure it out, to get better, to come together. Their future success will be revealed in the quiet beautiful grace of nearly silent flight that will lead them to wherever the approaching cold demands that they go.  They are not there yet.  But they will be.  

And on the other hand, "I can't wait till (video game I can't remember the name of) comes out- I will like be playing that from when I wake up to when I go to bed" said the young woman holding a child like an extra large bag of potato chips as she walked passed me in front of the post office.  It was clear that the video game she was about to commit to in a way she has likely never committed to anything else in her life was the priority, the purpose, the reason for her to get up on at least one day of her life.  I suspected that it wasn't the only day that her motivation was found in pixels on a screen. I wondered if she ever said those words about the child she was slinging around while making sure her phone conversation continued.  I prayed silently in hope this was her nephew.  Or someone else's child that she was babysitting.  Even though I knew it was not.  

I know it is wrong to judge.  But it is not wrong to question.  Above me moments later, animals that are considered such lesser life forms struggled to find their way in a communal flight that will likely take them thousands of miles.  A journey that not all will survive.  While down below, we with responsibilities, destinies, purposes, friends, families, and a world to change for the good find a million ways to derail our journey before it even starts.  Some, it seems, don't even know there is a journey, or even someplace to go.  All things in moderation, I suppose.  But we also owe it to ourselves and to each other to at least try and avoid the flashing lights, the bottles, the noises, the fear, and the anger that can take us so far away from any knowledge of why we are where.  What we are doing.  Where we are going.   

How smart those geese really are.  I bet they don't even know how to play a video game.