...to Art inspires reflection on Utah's Capitol Hill

Ernesto Pajol's "Awaiting" performance at the state capitol looked amazing, and this article's pictures and interviews made me wish I had been there. I loved the idea of the performance, or performance, whichever is correct, and interestingly, at the time of reading this article I was reading the newspaper as a time-filler, a way to avoid "a waiting" as the choreographer Pajol put it.

Besides that little irony, I liked what he had to say about modern people. He said,

We are in the habit of checking e-mail or going online in our hands. There's not even a waiting anymore. We are always so efficient, always working … and we forget that the real meaning and direction and depth of life lies not in this kind of frenzied activity, but in knowing who we are.

I tend to agree with him. I think that while one may become more efficient by using technology to communicate, we also forget how to wait, how to be patient, and what's probably more damaging is that we have forgotten how to treat other people face-to-face. How often do we see people come home from school or work, hop on their laptop in front of the television and spend their night interacting only virtually, and besides a few quips between commercials and loading web pages, fail to acknowledge the wonderful opportunity for live exchange with those with which they live? I have seen it in my apartment time and time again, and it seems to be a very normal and accepted thing.

So to get back to Pajol's idea of waiting being a good thing, I do wish we knew better how to wait, and how to enjoy that waiting. In his research of Utah he found a history of waiting, and he gives examples of the pioneers, the military families in the state, the Mormon, and he is positive that this waiting is in no way a bad thing, but a positive experience and reflection on the community.