Is it Worth it?

Mandy and I went to Chicago yesterday to see the musical "Wicked." It's based (rather loosely) on Gregory Maguire's book, same title. We really enjoyed ourselves, and we better have because we had to buy those tickets 6 months in advance. But as we sat there in the theatre, we realized a couple of things. First, that this was the first musical we'd been to together as a couple. We've probably been to over 100 concerts, seen several hundred films (some of them were musicals). Why don't we think to go to the theatre? It made us kind of sad, because there's something on the stage that is just so different than what is on the screen.

It touches on one of the root issues we have in our society when it comes to engaging art and culture... it seems like too much work. We literally centered our entire day around going. Sat in the car for a total of 3.5 hours, spent 25$ on parking, 160$ total for tickets, 50$ on all meals, 7$ on coffees. So it's hard in a different way than reading subtitles can be hard. It's hard to justify in our minds that this art is going to be worth all of this time and money.

The 2nd thing we realized was looking around this theatre, it is just astounding the kind of work that goes into them, architecturally speaking. You wouldn't have theatres like these popping up all over the place like you would a Starbucks.... because it's harder.

We seem to base so much of our lives around this concept of convenience. From the invention of the drinking straw to the drive-thru fast food to the Home Theatre. In our minds, we don't always question whether or not something being convenient is worth the price we have to pay. Most of us don't realize there's a serious cost.

So, why is convenience the "lord of our lives"? Why have we decided this is the criteria for a movement being positive or negative? If it makes our lives more convenient, why are we willing to look the other way at consequences?