Visit from Gabrielle Giffords

We had a visit today at work from Gabrielle Giffords, our district’s U.S. Congresswoman. It was the first time I’d seen her speak about her job, addressing the various laws she supports, her views, the committees she’s on, etc.. One thing she said struck me as pretty interesting.

She said that she believes that back during the space-race time of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Americans were hungry to beat the Russians and to go for the hard stuff. Now the Chinese are hungry to make their place in the world, to be part of the capitalist society. My thoughts on this: I think Americans have grown soft, that we want everything that’s easy now. This is not true for everyone, this is a blanket statement–I recognize that. But most Americans are not looking to do something that’s difficult, which may be one of the reasons we don’t have as many Americans entering the “hard” math and science fields and going on to grad school in those areas.

I see this surfacing in a number of ways: the number of “quick” diets or pills out there that just don’t work, particularly for long term; the number of people who don’t want to read a long, hard book; the popularity of restaurants (we don’t cook anymore); the lack of people actually thinking about the influx of information we receive each day.

Maybe if we all start spending a few minutes each day shutting down a little, not multitasking as much, and start trying to challenge ourselves, we can become hungry again.