Zoom, of course, is the online collaboration platform, where one can have video presentations, chats, and other meetings and such with widely-dispersed groups. We use Zoom at BYU-Idaho in our teaching groups, where we may have teachers from across the nation working together to become better teachers in a teacherly way.
But this semester – it took me five weeks to find my way into the group chat. Because things had changed.
Or maybe not changed. I haven’t used Zoom much, and when we have meetings, I get a link to them. To go into the program – annoying called apps these days – was something I hadn’t done in a long time. So it took some time to remember how to get there. And how to log in. And what my password was. And to realize I didn’t need my password if I used a push notification which, thankfully, I have used more often and remembered how to do.
So there I was, stumbling into the chat four weeks after the fact, like an Elf finally giving up on Middle-Earth and heading to the Grey Havens to sail to the Undying Lands.
Elves, we have to remember form Tolkien’s universe, love stasis.* Their world was perfect, so why change that? But due to the meddling and weaknesses of men – and the scheming of those who destroyed Numenor and brought their evil to Middle-Earth – their existence was threatened and their stability shattered. Though they hadn’t given into the corruption of the One Ring, it hung heavily over their heads, viz:
So when stasis could not be maintained in Middle-Earth, they departed for Valinor, where their stasis could be maintained.
I’m evolving into a technological elf. I want things to remain the same. I’m tired, for example, of our teaching groups changing each semester, having to find the new place in the community, It’s awful.
But I need to be adaptable. Things will change and continue to change, and those who refuse to change are doomed to wander, lustrous and beautiful, in a world that no longer suits them.
*Warning: Major Nerd Alert
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