No One Claps Anymore

Granted, we have become accustomed to many conveniences, it is our current environment. Although granted, not to be taken for granted.

Every day, people sit on cushioned seats and are Aladdined through the air, safely to their destination:

Picture someone using an airplane bathroom mid-flight.
Now strip away the airplane.

We have mastered the art of controlled explosion, and are able to go long distances in a few hours or a day. We have coded sand and used it to communicate around the world.
How could anyone not clap?

There is always an old man cursing at his smartphone.

*******

I would like to accept pleasures when they present themselves and have the willpower to say 'no' or 'enough,' to enjoy pleasure without attachment. I would like patience to allow situations to become what they will.

Things are always what they seem - at first
At an appropriate time,
a bad thing may serve a good use
and a good thing becomes a curse
And after that time, none of it will matter
in the same way pieces of water,
replaced by other pieces of water,
are all still the stream
Context is everything

The world is very tolerant and forgiving. It will produce something like tobacco, without connotation, and the world will allow someone to use it until cancer and poison destroy function, and the world will take that body into itself, and even cancer and poison can become a flowering bush, a fruiting tree.