The other day I was cleaning my room and found a bunch of different treasures. Yes, I call them treasures because I hid them in the weirdest places, and they have turned into foreign objects to me. Anyways, in this large group of treasures, I found a collection of Junie B. Jones books, a candy crush letter from freshmen year of high school, my journal that had entries from all the way back in 2009, and last but not least, my iPod shuffle.

I immediately jumped up when I saw the little, purple square peek out from under my dresser. I remember my mom wanting to sell it when I got my cell phone because I could just listen to music on that instead. Well, sadly, I’m a hoarder, so there was no way my mom was going to get ahold of it. My room gets a good cleaning of all the little memories maybe once or twice a year. When I found this treasure, I immediately ran and asked my mom where the charger could be! I didn’t think we would have any luck finding it, but lucky for me we did. I instantly plugged it in and let it gain some battery, and not even an hour later I shoved my headphones into the only plug on it and turned the volume all the way up!

“Piece of Me” by Britney Spears shoved through the thin, white wires and straight into my ears. Cranking the volume all the way up probably was not my best idea! Of course, the anticipation was killing me the whole time the little thing was charging. I just didn’t realize how inconvenient it was back then not knowing what song would play or what song would come on next.

My iPod shuffle taught me a lot about the stone age. How did we even survive? No screen to constantly look at, and no way of checking what you wanted to jam to next? I mean, we really had it rough. I AM JOKING! What my iPod shuffle really taught me in general is how far we have come technologically. We spend so much time looking at screens that we forget the times that we didn’t have to. While I enjoy being able to YouTube any song at any time, and knowing what I’m going to listen to next, I also enjoyed how simplified it was back then. I wasn’t worried about the song that would come on next because I was so into the song that was playing right at that moment.

My iPod shuffle taught me that living in the moment, regardless of what we have, is very important. My iPod shuffle was definitely something I was excited about when I was younger, but it was never made to be a priority or necessity in my life. Now I can’t even leave my house without my cell phone. Maybe we should all take a second and go back to the stone age, think about our iPod shuffles, and just try to be in the moment. It might open your eyes to what is going on, instead of what could be going on in the future.