IMPORTANT NO MORE!

I came across a telephone pole earlier today and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for it. I have been passing it and several of its brothers many times but I have never noticed them until today when I almost tripped over one……………………………..well not actually the pole itself but that thing that props it up!! The clumsy oaf in me had finally been able to see what had been staring me in the face all these months without recognition.

Back in the day the telephone pole was an important part of life. It was festooned with wires and all kinds of finery and some gadgets that enabled the switching of the signal between different numbers. It arrogantly stool tall and strong looking down aloof at all the hustle and bustle around it secure in its own cloak of importance. After all nothing could happen unless it said so. No one could communicate unless it said so and infact the minute something would go wrong all the technicians would look up for a sign that all was alright up there shading their eyes from the sun as if genuflecting to this all important deity of communication.

Then the mobile phone came calling…………….pun intended…………and everything changed. Slowly the telephone pole fell into a state of disrepair, no longer looked after with tender loving care until finally those tasked with ensuring that it was constantly pinging for all it was worth gave up all together.

Now it stands there on its death bed hoping that the relevance of the past can be rekindled but knowing that its death sentence was sounded a long time ago and it is now only a matter of time before the final fatal blow is struck…………..with the uprooting of the telephone pole as progress inexorably marches on!

The importance of the telephone pole was no more, people had moved on and found a new love and had virtually………...pun intended………….decided that the mobile way was the way to go!! Now stripped of its finery and festooning wires and things the telephone pole is a pale shadow of itself. Gaunt and stark it stands, naked to the eye and invisible to all but those that stumble or trip over it or its component parts, its relevance now overtaken by the digital and mobile age where everybody carries a device no larger than a good sized pamphlet and just as light with a computing power 1000 times more than the earliest military computers of the 1940’s.

And so it goes too with those that were important in society in days gone by and whose word was exalted, listened to and feared all at once. They were held in awe and high esteem by all and sundry and treated with kid gloves lest they throw a tantrum that could get you a stint in a police cell or worse still prison. The glory days of many of these people is long past and their feeble attempts to remain relevant are slowly become more like a pantomime or a dark comedy funny to only those with the darkest of souls!

So there you have it a comparison between the humble telephone pole of yore and those once powerful VIP’s amongst us whose glory days are long gone, scattered to the four winds like the whirling dervishes of the desert and who you are more likely to trip over than recognize being consumed in their own sense of self importance and relevance while the reality is that they are waiting for the final nail in their coffins and illustrious lives and careers!!

I am sure you can relate this to many once self important folk amongst us today, and before you castigate me for spreading potentially scandalous ‘muchene’ please say a quick prayer for those whose relevance like a telephone pole is no more.