SIgns

Sign Sign everywhere a sign

Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign

So can’t you read the signs?  I believe that we as a society have reached the point of sign-overload on so many levels it is scary.  For example as a police officer I see the results of sign-overload every time I work.  I see people coast through intersections with a slight tap of the brake.  I stop the cars and ask the standard cop question, “do you know why I stopped you?”  The answer almost always is “no officer, why?”  I tell them because you went through the intersection without coming to a complete stop.  The response is almost always the same “I stopped”.  They are not lying.  They are telling the truth as far as they know.  For the most part they truly believed they stopped.  Now this is the moment of truth, ticket? Or no ticket?  If the offender is or acts contrite and admits they may have actually cruised through the intersection without coming to a complete stop then no ticket.  If they want to argue and be obtuse then ticket. 

The aforementioned scenario is analogous to our lives today.  We “drive” around with our eyes glazed over and we subconsciously see the signs but we coast right by them.  Why, because we are in survival mode.  We have to work to pay our bills.  We is the key.  We is plural.  We are no longer in a one bread winner family situation.  We have to work. Both parents are holding down multiple jobs trying to get a little bit of an edge on life. 

What happens then is we buy stuff to put in our houses.  Ironically, we buy cool TV’s, stereos and gadgets to occupy our time and our children’s time and we don’t have time, to spend time watching our TV’s or enjoying our gadgets.  We miss the signs.  Our children are raised by MTV, HBO, Xbox 360 and Personal Computers.  Not because we don’t care for them or love them.  To the contrary, we only want the best for them so we spend our time away from them and we miss the signs. 

Our children are stressed.  They are inundated on a daily basis with more and more input, good bad or indifferent.  We have strangers peering into our homes talking to our children via of the internet through Myspace and Facebook and other social networks.   So then why are we so amazed when a stranger reaches with their sick, twisted thoughts and fingers through cyberspace into our homes.  These are people we wouldn’t let walk near our children let alone speak to them yet they become our children’s confidants, friends and in the worse case our children’s abusers. 

Why because we don’t see the signs.  Wake up my friends and watch for the signs.