The past

Do you ever think of how it was before? My Mom often tells me that she is shocked at how, these days, when she leaves her portable phone at home she gets worried. When she was young she didn't have a phone and that never impeded on any of her projects. It's funny to think how close the past really is for us. Not long before my parents there was no TV, how would you pass time? Our parents didn't have internet, where would you research things? When you left the country and couldn't call because the prices were too high you would send letters. People almost never write letters anymore. When we look at old books -my Dad collects ancient books- the ones that are handwritten that is, you see how much time they took for every single line of writing. Nowadays people shy away from anything that takes too much time. People can't sit through a whole movie without stopping it to go do something else or checking their phone to see if something else is happening.
Personally I think this is the worst possible thing that could happen to us. If you can't, for example, write a page of calligraphy and concentrate on every letter to write it perfectly and never stop once, how can you enjoy things to their full extent. I am persuaded that there are some people, because of the pace of today, that can't enjoy a second of their lives.
Imagine going back in time to about... two hundred years ago. There was no TV, there were no Movies, there was no internet, there was no school even to see your friends at (or at least not for the girls). How would you spend your day? The only means of contacting people was by letters and it took weeks to get an answer or even to visit anyone.
So how would you spend your day? What would you do? When the only books there are are the literary classics that nowadays we find so abhorring in their dullness.