Content Matters…

…

at least it should.

But in a world where people are exposed to thousands of commercials daily, it somehow dosn’t seem to work according to the headline. Content does not matter. But status does, clothes do, labels and appearance and all too often the words you say, instead of the deeds you perform.

It is somehow part of the system we live in – it is so fast that you have to convince in the first chance you get; it is so short living that today is forgotten in an instant; tomorrow has become the ever promising horizon. But if today no longer matters, if every moment is overtaken by the next one, faster, higher, better, more, more, more, we loose the ability to be, just be in the now. It is only in the now where we can find out about ourselves, where we can find out about our relations to others and the things of the world around us. But the now is destroyed by rining mobile phones, blackberrys, portable computers – the next e-mail has replaced the thought of the self and its relation to the world. In the absence of the now, there has been established a dictatorship of the surface, the first impression. There is no time anymore for the second impression.

What does that do to us? Is it a problem?

It is because we are drowning our awareness – the most precious ability evolution gave us – in the quantity of possibilities, desires, needs, noises. Restlessness is the result. Restlessness without peace makes sick – or in the least, unhappy. And this is what every society all across the industrialized countries is experiencing. People are not happy.

Content matters?

We all have a feeling for this; that there should be witnesses to our life, someone who cares – longer than the first impression. There is a feeling inside all of us, I think, telling of the wish that content should matter more. It is the stomach ache that we feel after a delicious meal in a fancy restaurant; the headache we have a nice talk on the mobile phone; the aching back after an hour in the world wide web of distance. Physical pain tells about soul ache. And it is there in those feelings that we can find understanding: this world has become too restless. There is only time for a first impression and thus we feel that the moment in the nice restaurant has vanished even before we have eaten our plate empty; the words from the phonecall have lost the meaning right after we have hung up.

In the dictatorship of the first impression we have forgotten to feed our souls.

It is content that matters. It matters what you invest into your soul – and sometimes this might be an hour of waiting, just sitting at the train station listening to the sound of your thoughts. Sometimes the best music comes from inside the head – if you let content matter.