Just Google It…

It’s remarkable how we come to take things for granted in our lives – aspects of daily living that we always assume will be there.  Mind you we don’t all have the same outlook on life, and thus do not share same expectations out of life.  There is an old adage that talks about the “sum of the parts being greater than the whole”…but what happens to the whole when some of the parts that make up the “sum of the parts are missing?” Mind you, some of those parts that make up the sum of the parts are more important to us than others.  Among our minor “obsessions” are gaming, writing, coffee and….

Google.

The phrase “Just Google it” has become (and much to the dismay of services like Yahoo I am sure) a part of our language. This of course can go so far that the name can no longer be copyrighted. (remember the old “this is not a xerox” ads by the Xerox corporation?) Now for those of you who are not aware, the google web search service went out this morning.  We are so use to seeing it as our home page that we naturally assumed there was something wrong with the computer.  Just like the old expression that says to ”assume the impossible” when all else is eliminated we were finally forced to assume the impossible.

Google went down.

We have no idea if the reason was similar to the outage in May of 2009 but its back up now.   Now you may ask yourself why wax philosophical about a search engine?  It works something like this:  Leonardo Da Vinci once admonished those who wished to be painters to stare at the cracks in walls to find images in the patterns. Likewise we often engage in the same mental equivalent as a writers exercise. 

Where this lead us to is this…

Many people we have known (including us) have taken many aspects of their lives for granted. Often those are simply our favorite pass times – our favorite games (we had to work games in their somewhere) or our favorite television shows (well not us, as our television isn’t hooked up to an antenna or a cable and hasn’t been for over a year). Now while some of the English majors out there are marveling at the last run-on sentence the rest of us will move on.

Some of the aspects of our lives that we take for granted are of a great deal more importance, and yet we don’t always realize it.  If we woke up and World of Warcraft wasn’t there we would simply move on to the next mmo.   But what if someone you knew wasn’t there?  There have been people we have come to know over the years as the result of what Marshall McLuhan called “the global village” that disappeared forever as the result of one advent or another. After the recent fires in Australia a friend or two stopped answering emails (we still pray they are alright). Julie’s grandfather had a little ditty he used to utter from time to time: “it’s a great life with a wife, it’s a great life without a wife, who the hell wants a wife.”  He stopped of course, when the day came that his wife was no longer there (God rest her soul).

So where is all this going?

One of our favorite authors is Charles Schultz (God rest his soul as well). Yes we said “Authors”  – there is much wisdom in the words of those children that make up the cartoon “Peanuts”. One of our favorites was Linus. One cartoon shows Linus building an elaborate sand castle on a beach.   Eventually a wave comes along and washes it away. Linus looks up and says “There is a lesson to be learned here somewhere but I don’t know quite what it is.”

We do.

Of all the aspects of your life that you may or may not take for granted the most precious is people. Keep in mind that the people that make up your family are not always those to which you are related by biology.  So before you pick up the next game go hug someone who makes up your family, even if that is a friend in the next cubicle.

Thus endeth the theology lesson for today.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team