曾彥寧
With the development of high technology,
there are more and more recreations for people. We can surf the
Internet; we can play computer games; we can listen to music and see
movies without going out. All these things are very common recreations
now because of their convenience. However, they also prevent this
younger generation from getting close to nature.
I can still recall that
in my childhood, what we played with were some local neighborhood
materials. We could play outside all day long just with some stones or
even nothing. I knew how to catch a grasshopper, a dragonfly, and to
fish for a frog. My life was pretty close to nature. In the mean time
I also played video games, but they were not recreation; they were
something like television programs. Children at that time wouldn』t
watch TV all day; kids always had fun outside instead of staying at
home. Although now it may seem like the other way around, we were
really satisfied with those simple pleasures.
Ironically, children
today are no longer satisfied with that kind of pleasure. Kids are bound
to those staged performances, such as computer games, TV shows, and
amusement parks, which are distant from natural life. Take amusement
parks for instance. There are various kinds of recreation installations
and all of them are hi-tech, exciting, and imported from foreign
countries. While people live in a hi-tech lifestyle, they easily forget
how the real world is. When children get used to exciting things, they
may not be satisfied with the simple pleasures ever after. What』s
worse, today kids accept almost everything from foreign cultures, which
makes them tend to ignore our local culture. This generation is moving
far from the natural world, and it would be a pity if children lose
contact with their own cultural heritage.
We have been told to
look outward and forward; however, under this circumstance people are
ignoring our local and natural life. This is very clear in today』s
recreations. Children are adopting a different culture from Taiwan』s
own without being conscious of it. Although there are still amusement
parks with natural sceneries in them, it no longer works to bring
children close to nature. What we should do is to develop a new idea of
natural life for children and build more parks around our residential
area to help kids get used to being close to nature. There are so many
beautiful and natural sceneries in Taiwan, and they should be seen and
enjoyed instead of wasted and ignored.