Did you set the Alarm?

My wife oft asks of me as we get to bed every night. I got to wondering why it is that we are so beholden to this alarming idea that seems to invade our sense of being kings of our domain. Could it be that we are all moving like mechanised automatons and really pushing through time wanting to chase a sequence that we ourselves were responsible to write? Or are we expectant of a proverbial bounty at the end of the time rainbow and not want to miss it lest we slept in? I think we have just lost it. We have invented a world for ourselves where the material chase has consumed us like an addict on crack and we will do everything in our living power to continue to fulfill our desires - some negligible to some truly outrageous along the way. There are now millions of these - Alarms! From warning us of passing time to detecting all manners of gases (those that cannot be consumed for healthy living) to all the kitchen appliances that warn and beep and tink to alert you to that cake that baked or the toast that burnt or the casserole that is oozing out the doors. Then there is the medical industry that once you get caught in will poke and probe you and leave you with wires dangling as if you were an experiment and provide non stop entertainment with all the charts and beeps and papers spewing out with alarming frequency. On to fancy newer pads and pods and their methods of providing you that jarring constant through Mozart and Beethoven's Fifth or whatever number you choose to buzzing in case you are in another disarming converation. Fortunately we have managed to stay away from having our child enroll in the mad dash syndrome such that she can have free play most of her weekend (outside school hours) but do wonder what her peers (as in the peer families) are chasing by way of a series of events that would make an Air Traffic Controller's head spin. I mean from dance recital to tennis or soccer to piano to French language classes the kid either goes spinning out of control or the parent does. Not to mention that constant idevice reminding the parent of their next destination - no wonder traffic fatalities and accidents are going to go up. I mean who came up with the idiotic notion of don't text and drive? Used to be don't drink and drive... to which a wise man chose to first drink then drive. All this incessant reminding and buzzing and ringing along with all the brownian humanity that we wander around in is already leading to increased numbers of ticker stoppage and relatively younger, wealthier and multi talented individuals ending up on the hospital bed that makes all those beeping sounds.