Into a world so new
Every new adventure comes with trepidation. Every new challenge, fear. That’s human. There will always be a natural fear for what’s unfamiliar. Even the most prepared will have that urge to run back to where it is safe and familiar.
In a lecture to communication students a few months back, I pointed out that the newsroom is fast transforming into something we do not have a clear grasp of. It’s because the changes are very revolutionary, spurred on by technology. We are in the cross-currents of something drastically different from what the media industry was like even just five years back, and like in any cross-currents, the tug upward and downward will be strong, and many will drown.
As in any cross-currents too, visibility will be low. That is the very reason we still cannot get a full comprehension on what is emerging. It’s exciting as I watch the newbies get their feet wet in uncharted waters.
“That is your world, these are your audience,” I told a group of interns who could barely grasp what I was talking about, much less imagine the world they will be stepping out of on their last year in school.
Can you imagine yourself, a new mass communications graduate taught the knowledge of long ago, realizing there is not much you can make use of except for your ability to maximize the use of your smartphone, which you did not even learn in the classroom?
There has never been a time ever before that there is this generation who cannot be properly guided by the elders simply because the elders do not know what the world is becoming, and do not have the ability to jump into the technological train.
Never before in history has the mantra to keep on upgrading one’s knowledge and capabilities been of greater importance than today as the age of communication sweeps us into a realm so new... yet echoing and rumbling with so much noise and dirt.
How to be heard, read, or watched amid all that din will be the major challenge. As I ponder on that comes a thought: Maybe that’s why the Millennials and GenZs are speaking in voices way too loud. They are so used to all these trash and noise around them, they instinctively raise their voices just to hear each other.
What a life that is.
But of course, people do have the choice to retreat and find the quiet where productivity lies. The key is to listen to the heart and learn to empty the mind--shut down the noise.
In this very unfamiliar world that we are coming to face with comes the realization that the old masters were right all along. It is in the quiet of your mind where you will find enlightenment, where you will hear your heart, and where you will know the way.
And so we quiet our minds and take time as well to browse through the moments where we learned our greatest lessons in lives, the dark nights of the soul that brought about the person that I am now. That same person who once held Psalms 91 as the prayer for all times, the favorite ever, until now when 2 Corinthians 4 hold the greater meaning.