"Creativeness often consists of merely
turning up what is already there.
Did you know
that right and left shoes
were thought up only
a little more than a century ago?"
-- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon
[Classic post from 12-30-14]
As appalling as this sounds to me, after some basic searching, it seems to be true about producing right and left shoes. There is also a shoe museum called the Bata Shoe Museum in West Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In addition, the first sneakers were made in America in 1916 and were not called sneakers until much later. They were called Keds. I can remember as a kid going to the shoe store to get some Keds. I had no idea.
The first lady's boot was designed for Queen Victoria in 1840, and in Europe, it wasn't until the eighteenth century that women's shoes were different from men's. There's a lot about shoes that I had made assumptions about.
What's interesting to me is how much time went by with so little improvements in common things. Transportation is another subject that boggles the mind in how long it took to move faster than walking or running or riding on horseback.
Some years ago I read an absolutely fascinating book by Stephen Ambrose titled, Nothing Like It In The World about the building of the first Transcontinental Railroad in America. I am revisiting this in the audio version as we speak and it reminds me of all this and how things were so slow to change.
Yet, here is the other interesting part: Once they began to change, they morphed quickly into better and better versions and then into other things. Considering the long past, it was a very short time from the invention of, and introduction to, America of the idea of the train and locomotives. Once here, they began a steady improvement and expansion that was nothing short of amazing.
The world moves faster all the time. If you've studied any history before 1900, you found that the world changed so radically after 1900, and even more as time went on. The airplane, then air transportation is a perfect example along with the electric light, appliances, computers, and so much more.
The Internet is not old, it is a youngster. Yet it has changed all of our lives quite dramatically. I remember using the first computers at work in the car business and they didn't even have hard drives. Then when hard drives came out they were 1 MB, 5 MB, and such. As programs became better, they needed more space and more speed and the expansion race was on. Now I have more than 1 GB just for my email. I also remember modems and how new they were, but so slow. Transferring 1 MB would have taken more than a day. Now it takes a second or less. Crazy differences in speed.
As the world gets faster and faster, we take more and more for granted. We even get upset with the slowness of things because we've sped up faster than the technology, or at least the operator sense of the technology. In other words, we become impatient so quickly, whereas in the past we didn't have those issues or the stress from that impatience.
I watched a movie last night where the female dance coach said to the male dancer about to go into a contest: Breathe! It is wonderful advice for us all. Let us pause now and then, breathe, feel for some peace as we absorb and celebrate ever more and faster changes in our future days.
The Pause That Refreshes. Breathe!
Spread Some Joy Today--by practicing your patience and enjoying the journey wherever you are moving to and from.
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