To Ease the Passing of Time

When we switched from Bell to Rogers for our internet service about a month ago, a technician came to our house to install the new equipment. He changed our old router for a new one supposedly more advanced. The result of this change is that our supposedly more advanced router is not able to connect automatically to our laptop. We now have to use a wire to connect our laptop directly to the router in order to go online. We cannot use our laptop anywhere in the house like before.

Since I retired almost nine years ago, I sometimes feel like an old laptop that can no longer connect automatically to the Wi-Fi. Like my old laptop, I have all the required components, and they seem to be working just fine, but it seems that for some reasons I’m not able to connect like before. Why?

I am well informed and I know what is going on in the world. With the traditional and the social media, I have access to a lot of information. I can listen to people talk and discuss about all kinds of subjects and social issues like climate change, crime, education, immigration, wokeism, politics, languages, but also about religion, history and philosophy, not only in my own country but everywhere in the world. But it does not necessarily make me more connected with the environment I live in. Sometimes, it’s the opposite. It makes me feel even more isolated. I know more about what the English people feel about Brexit or the French about the possible involvement of their country in the war in Ukraine than what the people around me think about our own problems and issues.

I think that in order to take the pulse of a society and feel that we are part of it we need to have real conversations with real people, and if possible with people of different age groups and from different walks of life. We have to know where their ideas, opinions and values come from, what makes them worried, what gives them hope, and what makes them laugh. We need to be able to connect with the right router, and if we are not able to connect automatically to the Wi-Fi, we have to use a wire.

When it comes to staying connected with the world around us, what would be the equivalent of that wire? I think that in most cases the answer is grandchildren. My sister Michèle told me recently that she has very interesting conversations with her granddaughter, Mackenzie, on a great variety of social issues and subjects. That helps her stay connected. My sister Louise and my friend Suzanne told me the same thing about the conversations they have with their grandchildren.

As we get older and more isolated, some of us tend to look at the world from outside, as if we were spectators instead of participants. In a way, it’s true. Almost nobody really cares or gives a shit about what we think and what we say, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a need for connection. If we are not permanently connected like we used to be when we were students or workers, we just need to find a wire. For me, the wire that I have found is writing. It's not perfect but it helps.

Talking about writing, I have just finished writing this article offline. Now I am going to get my wire to connect my laptop to the router and publish it online.