Dear LPG, 

Now and then, I find myself deep in thought, and I feel this one needs to be passed on. 

Have you noticed just how many relatively small organisations are beginning to catch up with the fact that any information which ends up on a website loses its exclusivity to the small areas of the world where it originated? We have moved into an era where all those people who found a need that they thought they might be able to fulfil in the small community around them are not big enough to be seen to matter, somehow. It is one of those happenings that has occurred so often over recent years, where one person sees a small need that they try to fill in a relatively minor way. Still, if the idea does not gradually grow significantly, it is not considered to be successful. It happens in all aspects of life, and we can see it when we look back at so many things in life that we take for granted. Even people around us often look at their neighbours and measure their success by just how much bigger they can be seen to have grown. It's good in some ways, but not so in others. 

I did say ‘gradually’ but the internet tells that our world has been around with people on it for the past 4000 plus years while the Wright brothers only managed to get us off the ground in 1926, Carl Benz got the first car rolling in 1886 and, the forerunner of the first computer only materialised about 190 years ago courtesy of Charles Babbage and his 40 years of determination as he worked on its development. 

You will agree when I say that the past 200 years represent just a drop in the ocean when you look at it that way. We oldies that are still around today can argue that we have been around long enough to remember a time when fewer people were able to take these things for granted.  Today’s older generation has truly seen some of the most serious yet gradual changes that the world has ever experienced.

International travel and being able to see how others live so literally with the help of the internet and cinematography has blurred the lines that have surrounded our different villages so drastically that I can’t help but wonder if our grandchildren will remember the towns and neighbourhoods they grew up in at all. 

We only have to look at our grandchildren now to notice how many of them spend so much of their time virtually exploring the furthest reaches of this world on the internet, that they so often miss what is immediately around them.  They have forgotten to spend a little time just beyond their front doors in the outside world.

As a result, the traditions, culture and heritage that allow us to walk from one unique village to another may well be disappearing faster than we know. 

It may be the case that we oldies, with all the profound local knowledge that we have not grown up with the internet, could be the last of an era if we do not pass on what we have stored in the vaults of our minds. If the internet is the only way to do that, we need to utilise the tools available to us. Despite the internet and our growing international communities, it is up to us to remember the smaller boundaries that our planet can be divided into, as well as the broader picture that the media presents to us. 

Before it is too late, we need to stop measuring success only by growth, and the size and popularity that the things around us have managed to achieve over the years of their existence. After all, as we each get older, we don’t measure our success by our physical size. 

TS, Erith