A Pearl

A rare find while hitchhiking the Internet

While researching the NBT (Next Big Thing), I happened upon this gem. Perhaps it’s been around forever and is just now reaching my place. Whatever. Give it a read while my trusty CPU goes in for Software Change surgery, necessary to handle the onslaught of Win 11, something we must have to survive. Or something.

BW

We Are the Bridge

My name’s Richard. I’m 74. I sometimes think our generation is the bridge between two worlds — one made of dirt roads and handwritten letters, the other made of satellites and screens in our pockets.

I was born in a house without air conditioning. Summer meant open windows and the hum of a box fan. We knew the neighbors by name, and if your bike chain broke, you knocked on any door until someone found a wrench. We grew up on patience — waiting for the mail, waiting for the library to open, waiting for the radio to play our favorite song again.

Then the world sped up. Phones shrank, music became invisible, and the news didn’t take days to reach us — it arrived in our palms before we finished breakfast. We learned to type, to swipe, to tap. We learned to talk to machines and have them talk back. We learned… because we always had to.

We’ve seen milk delivered to the door in glass bottles, and we’ve scanned groceries without a cashier. We’ve dropped coins in payphones and made video calls across oceans. We’ve known the sound of silence — no buzzing notifications — and the sound of an entire world pinging at once.

Sometimes younger folks think we’re behind. But here’s what I know: our generation knows both worlds. We can plant tomatoes and write an email. We can tell a story without Google, and then fact-check ourselves with it. We know the weight of a handwritten letter because we’ve held it, and we know the reach of a message sent in seconds because we’ve pressed “send” and watched a reply arrive from thousands of miles away.

We are proof that you can change without losing yourself. That you can honor where you came from while learning where the world is going.

We’ve buried friends and welcomed grandchildren. We’ve watched diseases disappear and new ones arrive. We’ve known paper maps and GPS, postcards and emojis, patience and immediacy.

And maybe that’s our real gift — we carry the memory of a slower, quieter world, and the skills to navigate the fast, loud one. We can teach the young that not everything needs to happen instantly… and remind the old that it’s never too late to try something new.

We are the bridge. The middle chapter. The link between what was and what will be.