The Lost While

4 Pages 1069 Words

The Lost While


Noelle Oxenhandler’s essay, “The Lost While” is an astonishingly realistic depiction of what our society has become. It portrays the unconscious monster-like attitudes we express in our everyday life. Today’s society with its extreme technology has altered our thoughts to what enjoying the moment means!
In contemporary life, we are so caught up with the worries of the everyday world and its responsibilities, we never take the time to sit down and enjoy the moments that could be so special. However each person individually cannot be blamed for this. Society has changed our views and thoughts through a booming industrial period and so called conveniences. Families and professionals of all sorts have developed this same type of fast-pasted mindset of the world. This is creating a circle that is never-ending, that gets more complex with time.
Oxenhandler quotes that, “We have come to believe that convenience is necessity” (310). Oxenhandler expresses that we get angered and frustrated when what we want is not immediately available to us. These feelings are the product of a booming society that has deeply enrooted a desire for a perfect world; a perfect world where to want is to have. The author goes into details about how living in the moment has evolved into the pressure-filled life we live in today. This is sad to admit, yet, it is all but the truth. Reminiscing Oxenhandler tells of how one of her favorite activities is to send letters to people. She says now the satisfaction of the process of mail delivery is corrupted; due to the technology that brought us e-mail and fax machines. Oxenhandler says that because of this, an intrinsic part of the letter writing process; the delay of a letter-in-transit is being taken away. The anticipation you get of your recipient getting his or her mail is no longer there. Because of the high-tech machines used today, your mail is almost instantly at...