We've Replaced Reverence with Relevance

Reverence: : honor or respect felt or shown : deference; especially :profound adoring awed respect

Relevance: the ability (as of an information retrieval system) to retrieve material that satisfies the needs of the user

I don't know if it's age, or what, but I'm becoming more old-fashioned lately.  I don't mean that in every way, but in the way we treat each other and to what we give reverence to, I am.  No matter what recent trends dictate, or marketing analysis say, I think there is still right and wrong. How we define it varies, but the basic principle is the same.

The scale keeps sliding as marketing firms and companies struggle to stay "relevant."  The common belief is to stay relevant, one must be cutting edge and appeal to that all powerful and highly sought out 18-49 demographic.  I'm still in that demographic (albeit barely) and most of them are missing the mark with me.  I don't want to tweet while I'm in a theater watching a live stage production or hear jokes about Presidential assassinations. 

I'm not a prude or easily offended. I can be just as irreverent as the rest of them, but if we don't hold something sacred, what is to become of us?  The human race will eventually implode because there's nowhere to go. Nothing left to hold dear.  No reason to go on. Look at seventy five percent of the television offerings. Housewives of New Jersey, Real Housewives of (fill in blank), Honey Boo Boo.  Is this where we're going?  This is entertainment?

Maybe I'm unrealistic, but I want some things to be special.  I want to go to a theater and see a live show without the person next to me texting or talking on their phone.  I want to get dressed up and go to Lincoln Center to see Sweeney Todd.  I don't want to watch it on YouTube. I want awards show hosts to be classy.  To represent the best we have to offer, not be "edgy" so the eighteen-year-olds watch.

At the end of my life I want to look back and know I had special events or moments in my life that I cherished, not a bunch of "nothing special" moments I documented on FourSquare.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Steel Magnolias.  "I'd rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special."

If we don't hold something sacred, we only get those lifetimes of nothing special.