It's popular in our world to say that someone is on the cutting edge of this or that, someone is at the forefront of this movement or that one or that someone or something is groundbreaking in some way. Where once the world moved in days, it now moves in minutes and seconds and the cutting edge has gotten to be razor sharp. New headway is being made on all fronts in all fields producing new innovations left and right so fast that even the Internet can't keep up.
At one point the world moved like a horse and buggy, slowly but dependably, making progress as it could and moving forward at it's own pace. Now the world moves like a sprinter, a sprinter constantly gaining speed and a sprinter in danger of tripping over his own two feet. The world has gotten faster indeed, but it has not gotten so reliably. Letters don't always get there though when they do it is much quicker, meal orders aren't always correct though the food is hot and fast when it is and still, perhaps more than ever, information is not reliable though it comes in milliseconds when it is.
But such is the price for being on the cutting edge, the unreliability, the uncertainty, the pain, the loss. But there is another price for the cutting edge, like any good blade it must be sharpened and the act of sharpening takes what is on the very tip and strips it away never to cut again.
We are constantly watching as people who were once ahead of their time become sadly out of date. We watch as scientists, writers, musicians and artists who were at the forefront a few years ago become nothing more than relics of the past. As the edge moves faster it must stay sharper and to stay sharper it must be sharpened more. That is why we see so many broken bones and broken lives, people getting their fifteen minutes and then being cast aside to land on the floor, broken and useless.
While the cutting edge is in many ways good, we must remember that it is a two-edged sword and it may very well, cut off the hand that pushes it along.
