Modern Life Is A Western

Reading Time: 2 minutesA few afternoons ago I tuned in to a Western on Television and I thought about how similar our modern lives have become to Westerns. Either we're the ones travelling all the time meeting new people and then leaving them behind or we're the ones staying in place while everyone around moves. The Western is out of favour but modern life makes Westerns more relevant than ever. Life is about perpetually meeting new people. doing new things and visiting new places.

Every Â Monday and Friday I arrive or leave work and see people with suitcases. Either they are leaving to another city for the weekend or coming back. Lives in a place like Geneva is a migratory one. On radio they announced that over 15 million passengers transited through that airport. There are far fewer people living in Geneva. Geneva has 184,500 people according to a google search several seconds ago. That's 81 flights per capita. That's not bad. That's a trip back and forth twice a week for fourty weeks out of fifty one.

After this you have the jobs that people do. Humanitarian work, journalism, business etc. Every one of these activities keeps people travelling. If we are of the right age we are called The "Easyjet generation". Can't drive a car but can afford to fly every single weekend, see every european capital and have friends in every country. When I graduated we were 100 students from 120 countries... That's not bad. This explains why when people ask where we're from we mention a country rather than a city. ;-).

Imagine going back to village life, imagine going back to living within 30 kilometres of where we were born and never travelling beyond-

We are not just the easyjet generation. We are also the social media generation because phone costs and SMS are less affordable than facebook, twitter, instagram and google plus. Imagine how often a group of friends would meet up and converse without modern social networks. Imagine if the social networks had remained as a place for friends to converse with friends. If that was the case I would travel more because I would be sleeping on a couch at friends' places in various countries.