Did you know that to drive from New York City to San Francisco should only take you about 2 days, if you go straight through? Hoboken to Sacramento (take about an hour off the total commute) is about 1 day and 23 hours, according to Google Maps, so I just did the math in my head. Interesting. That's not all - you're on basically one road the whole way - I-80. I've traveled a good stretch of I-80, I've seen every mile of it between NYC and the middle of Wyoming, plus every mile of it in California and a few in Nevada and Utah. But I haven't done the whole thing, complete.

Some day I'm going to make that drive.

The world is changing. We have different cares than people had just a couple hundred years ago. I live on the eastern coast of the American continent, the majority of my family resides on the west coast, a good 1/10th of the planet away from me. But my concerns aren't whether I will ever see them in this lifetime, or whether they'll get my written correspondence sometime this year. Instead, I'm wondering why dad can't respond to my text message in 5 minutes, and I'm busy making sure that my flight back home lands me at a convenient hour at JFK. Its interesting.

It doesn't have to do with just long-distance travel, either. We pace in front of the microwave these days because 45 seconds just seems like a ridiculous amount of time to actually heat food in. We wait a few seconds for an internet page to load with information that would have taken us hours or even days in a library to find, 10 years ago.

Instead of worrying if the rains will come and the crops will survive, we sit in dilemma at the drive-thru over whether the value meal is a better deal than ordering a few items off the 99 cent menu. Or we compare the price of the organic veggies to the chemically treated ones, if we're on the healthier side. Either way, we certainly don't have the time to spell out the word "through."

Random, I know...but I'm going somewhere with this. We still have concerns. A couple hundred years ago, people woke up early, worked hard all day and late into the night, caring for themselves and their family and trying to provide the best that they could. Today, we do the same things. Except now, its done primarily from behind the safety (for lack of a better expression) of a desk. Now we don't worry that the buffalo will herd in the right direction or the nets will find fish. Now we track the company's earnings or pray sales will exceed plan.

Somehow, for all our advancements, we haven't come that far. Technology has completely changed the world we live in, but it hasn't changed us. We feel like we accomplish more, but for all the extra things we may get done, we haven't extended our lives that much further. We can tell someone we love them a little faster. That's all.

Nothing ever changes. We'll always be too busy, life will always be too fast paced, and the inbox will always be full.