Bread Cast Upon The Waters

Many years ago (more than I like to think) I was an often times hungry graduate student in a church supported university. Every day, upon entering the beautifully hewn portals of the art complex, my eyes would slide across the Biblical quotation, "Cast your bread upon the waters…" The self-made millionaire who'd donated the money to build the complex, and of course whose name it bore claimed that living by this verse earned him millions. At the time, I had a hard time understanding the whole idea of throwing bread out at all! Sometimes a quarter would be the deciding factor between an afternoon sandwich or not.

However, as the years have passed and I've learned to think in much less literal terms, reached young adulthood at the beginning of the high tech era, and am approaching old age in its full flowering, I'm beginning to understand what the old guy meant. Many of us Baby Boomers who entered the job market in the early-mid 70's often found employment a challenge. Our large numbers made competition stiff for so many college-educated young people. Since many of us didn't get into what we intended, we've had checkered careers, jobs scattered here and there. On top of all that the rapid development of high tech made so many of our skills obsolete--ever notice how so many of Gen X can't spell and don't care; they have Spellchecker for goodness sake. So, what's happening now? We Boomers are casting our "bread" upon the "waters" of cyberspace in incredible numbers. High Tech has been transformed from
E-Commerce, to Net Marketing and List Building; you name it.
And who knows where it'll all end?

In any case, after thirty plus years, I finally looked up the entire verse: "Cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it in many days." Nice, hey, is that what we called Karma back then? So, as we cast our virtual bread upon the virtual waters, what can we expect to get in return? I find it hard to believe that we'll all end up dot com millionaires as all the marketing ads and schemes promise. The waters of cyberspace are often murky. At least once a day, I'm asking what's the product? What's the service? What am I supposed to do? And did I ever learn the hard way that some of these so-called free services take a dim view of a user with too much initiative; more about that later. But we continue to cast our bread, time, strength, creativity and energy out onto the waters of cyberspace. For what? Some of you out there have probably found your bread. Mine's still trickling in crumb by crumb. But, it's not over till it's over. Waters can be bitter or sweet; bread can be sweet, sour or bland. I have a feeling that returns will be mixed likewise.

Onward & Upward,
~Paula