Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2014 | Page 104

ANDREW TURNER MP coffee break reading... Andrew Turner MP The Riverside Centre, The Town Quay, Newport, IW - Tel: [phone] [email protected] www.islandmp.org Andrew Turner MP Running fast but where are we going? W ith the pace of life today it is often hard to find space just to think about things. Those of us of ‘a certain age’ may remember the arrival of the first television in our parents’ homes, but can find it difficult to actually remember what life was like before the ‘box’ in the corner came to such prominence. Similarly, young people today can hardly imagine life without computers, the internet and mobile phones. The idea of looking things up in books instead of ‘Googling’ seems antiquated to them, and as one youngster put to me recently ‘how did you know what you were reading wasn’t out of date?’. The answer, of course, is that it sometimes was – but that it usually didn’t 104 www.visitilife.com matter very much. Text messages have replaced love letters; we are constantly bombarded with advertising messages and our inboxes are always crammed full of e-mails. I’m sure we must all yearn for the time when Spam was the brand name of a tinned meat! The 21st Century is certainly lived at a breakneck pace. But where are we going to that we have to run so fast? The measurement of time itself hasn’t changed – there are still 60 minutes in every hour and 24 hours in a day. But what is different is that we can interact with so many people each day, via e-mail and other technology, in numbers that would have been unbelievable just a generation ago. We all jump faster and faster from one conversation to another. I have just recently joined Twitter (you can follow me on @TheIslandsMP), and although I find it an interesting way to connect with people, I only go onto it for a short while most mornings – which is clearly frustrating for those people who want instant answers. W H Davies’ most famous poem, Leisure, which starts with the lines ‘What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare’, was published in 1911. He was warning even then that the hectic pace of life can dishearten the human spirit and drew attention to how little of the world around us we notice. This feeling of things moving too fast is clearly not new! Sometimes we all need to take a breath and take a short break from the helter-skelter that is modern life. For me, when I am at home it is walking our little dog, Pickle, in the mornings, and when in London I always try to walk to and from work. It gives me a little space to think - away from the tyrannies of the phone, email and the other constant demands of people and technology. We all have to make important decisions, and my job involves me voting on things that may seem irrelevant, but in fact can affect people’s lives profoundly. If none of us have enough time to think through the issues how can we expect to have sound judgement? Am I the only one who sometimes longs for a more thoughtful world?