Having the opportunity to travel to Whistler this last weekend, in hopes of taking in some world class skiing, I witnessed something I wish I hadn’t seen.
We were very fortunate to be staying at a beautiful hotel that was only a few steps away from the chair lift. I woke up in the morning with excitement radiating through my veins. Not having been skiing to Whistler for about a decade, I had forgotten just how massive the mountain is. The initial lift that you take to the round-house, which isn’t even the top of mountain seemed to take 20 minutes. As we stepped out of the building housing the gondolas we stepped out on to this majestic plateau that made you feel like you were on top of the world, but we most certainly weren’t alone there. Beauty wasn’t the first thing that will captured my attention – it was hoards of groups of people taking selfies and posing for pictures. Instead of taking a few moments just to look out at the vastness below that mother nature had so beautiful etched out for us all to admire, people were more concerned at the angel and the lighting of the pictures they were taking. I was aghast.
It didn’t stop there. I latched in my boots and began to make my way down the hill, and what did I see, but more people stopping for more selfies. It wasn’t just your average selfie takers either, it was several people holding those very expensive stabilizing gimbals, as if they were all prepared for a day of filming for a movie shoot, where they starred and played all of the roles. There was little consideration for people around them. There was little real concern for enjoying the snow. The focus was on what was the next caption they could add to their feed.
Whistler has such a beautiful international feel as you walk through the village. You would only need to walk around for five minutes to see the different faces and varied languages being spouted out in the shops and restaurants, it really makes you feel like you are in a special place. With all that culture and variety of people I guess there was a part of me that was hopeful that the North American selfie-standard wouldn’t be the norm. Surely the rest of these countries were more civilized and hadn’t forgotten to appreciate the present moment and beauty around them.
Evidently, the plague seemed to have reached every corner of the globe. I know what you are thinking. “Surely families want to take pictures take seem as tokens that they would be able to cash in at some future date as for a found memory or two”, you might say. I would have to agree that there were a few families doing that, hell, I even offered and took a picture of a German family at the bottom of the ski lifts. I leap at the opportunity, calling out to the the father as he attempted to capture a keeper with his iPhone if he would like me to take a picture of the whole family for them. It actually made my heart feel warm knowing that I might be able to contribute to a healthy happy memory in some small way for them. That temporary restoration of peace and sanity to my conscience was the solace I needed after a day of being totally disappointed in humanity.
Now home, I sit outside on my porch drinking a large mug filled with tea, attempting to scan through my own layers of self-centeredness. I contemplating whether or not I too had somehow unconsciously morphed into one of those people I so easily judged on that snow covered hill. My introspection is quickly halted as I’m greeted by one of the most stunning humming-birds I have ever seen before. His wings flap at what I could only imagine of a thousand times a minute, and we share a brief moment of acknowledgement and then carries on for his search for nectar. I ponder just how many moments of appreciation for life, like the one I had just experienced were missed that weekend. Will these people be raving all about the picturesque scenery that most would only get to experience through the pages of National Geographic, or would they be more concerned about how happy they were that the lighting and filters used managed to temporarily hide their imperfections as they try to showcase they own unnatural filtered ‘beauty’.
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