A life of ease

The holidays are coming! How much easier does it have to be? We get to shop online for all the wants and needs and desires for family and friends. We don't have to get up, get dressed, get kids in the car, go to the store, fight the crowds, search for the magical item that everyone else wants, keep our kids in line to purchase a few things. We can just go online (still in our pajamas if we please) for all the wants and needs and desires for family and friends. Long gone are the days of the big catalogs that kids get to circle or dog-ear pages for their list. Black Friday sales begin right after Halloween, so no need to stand in line for hours to get that toy your kids wants.

We complain that there are no jobs in American for people, yet we are putting the jobs for cashiers out of business by doing online shopping. We had self check-out lanes open at the grocery store, because no one wanted to get stuck behind the person who had a large cart of groceries. Now you can place your whole grocery order online, someone else shops for you, and you drive up and have them load them in the car! Now most stores have large online shopping available, and in store shopping has decreased so much that long time big brand stores are having to close their doors.

Back in the early settlement of America, things were difficult. But they did them anyway. Sewing by hand, making homemade soaps and candles, walking to get buckets of water, tending their own farms, preserving their own foods, having to do trades for others goods, no electricity, etc. We take a lot of these things for granted today. The availability of modern medicines, of paper products and goods. The availability of someone to haul our trash away. Or do shopping for us. These nifty vacuums that constantly keep floors clean.  Where we no longer have to get up and actually do things.

I have heard people push for these new things so they have less work to do. And what do the majority of Americans do with their free time? Play on their super cool phones and scroll social media.

I am not throwing stones here, because I have done the online grocery shopping. At the time it was easier than taking three kids to the store, spending over an hour to shop, and spending more money than I needed. I have done lots of online shopping myself, again because it is easier to get clothes in my kids size online (let's not even jump into how our standard sizing has changed) and the fact that they don't have many department store options in our small town. In fact, I have our whole Christmas list on Amazon at the moment, because I figured it would be easier to have them all coming from one website. I will actually see if Target in store and Walmart have these items, and go start shopping in the next few weeks in store. I want to give the opportunity to the cashier who desperately needs that job. I don't want to be part of the group who is inevitably killing the American dream.