We live in a world full of wonder, both natural and man-made. But how often do we take a step back to truly appreciate how far we’ve come?
Here are some of the users’s best submissions for the AskReddit question “What is something amazing that we ignore because we have gotten used to it?”
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
By pushing certain areas of my phone in the right sequence, a pizza will show up in a matter of minutes to my front door.
Anonymous
Humanity had essentially escaped the food chain.
blakhawk12
Being able to talk to people all over the world through the internet. And we use it for memes and arguments.
Na_Red
I am a cashier and have a regular customer who always came in very quiet and almost mad looking. He always had a bandana wrapped around his head, but not the other day when I helped him and I asked him, “hey wheres your bandana?! Never seen you without it” and he said. “oh it’s cuz I’m not working right now cuz I had a surgery. and he was really happy and excited for some reason. So I asked “surgery, where?” He said, “My ears! I always had bad hearing, and I can actually hear clear now!” It was really cute to see a grown man look very happy, he was smiling like a kid. He made my day for sure. He said he never knew the world was so loud…
SciFiMovieFan
As a deaf person and someone that recently got brand new hearing aids…
How people with hearing can pinpoint where sounds come from LIKE WHOA! GUYS, IT’S A SUPERPOWER.
Rakiri
Just how many people were involved with everything around you. You walk down the street and see a building. It wasn’t one person that made that happen, it was the combined effort of A LOT of people from all walks of life.
That apple you got from the grocery store would have never gotten into your hands if it wasn’t for the farmer, distributer, grocer, etc.
It’s pretty amazing when you think about it, but we are just so used to it that we typically dont.
-eDgAR-
Computer animation is at an amazing level of sophistication. In just 20 years we have jumped from toy story to animating the hairs on characters’ heads.
N-XT
Its gotten to a point that if you are going to a supermarket and the doors don’t open automatically, you question if you’re in the good part of town.
BusinessEtiquette
Looking up the movie quotes, lyrics, or general information on the internet. Not so long ago, there was a lingering inability to find the answer without calling everyone you know, going to the library, or just giving up.
Serenity-
Totally took it for granted until Flint happened, and regularly take it for granted until some new news article comes out detailing the dirty water on our northern reserves.
making_mischief
Instantly, I can find out how to walk/bike/drive/etc anywhere from where I am, and they even have working limited capabilities when you don’t have signal. Heck with apps like Waze you even know where cops, hazards, everything is miles before you come across it.
bangableoiltycoon
When cellular video call become main stream in about 2010 I had a deaf guy walk into a sprint store I worked at. He had to write everything down for me to understand him and I finally wrote “why do you need a cell phone?” He wrote “I need a cell phone that I can use video calling with so I can sign my friends. it didn’t occur to me until that minute how incredible technology had become, I couldn’t help but shed a tear. This guy just wanted to chit chat with friends across the country he had met online through chat, they all got video phones that day. I was more excited than he was to make his first video call after activating the phone, I made him make it in the store. Needless to say every time I think about it I get teary eyed and I’m not the type of guy that displays emotion a lot.
aliallen11
The beauty of places you’ve been all your life. Sometimes when I’m driving around, I just look at the scenery and wonder why I haven’t noticed how beautiful it really is.
Turboactive1
Until the industrial era, blue dye was very uncommon and blue items were reserved for only the most rich and powerful. If someone from the Roman era were to see how much blue we use in everyday objects, I’m sure they’d be quite awe struck.
RekNepZ
Imagine a world where thunderstorms only happened once in a thousand years. Electricity comes from the sky and explodes a tree, or starts a fire even through the rain. Imagine the terror on peoples minds if it was that time of the millennium for a thunderstorm, assuming that someone might be struck by lightning and die, or what have you.
And then the parties when the storm passed, having killed no one. Lightning is pretty scary, but when you go through it 20 times a year, it loses its scariness.
justdontask3
Seriously. The blue sky changes colour before going black, the bright spot that you can’t look at goes… somewhere, it’s cold, there’s these little dots all through the sky and you lie down and hallucinate for hours.
Look at how much work we put in to making the night time habitable. How much effort goes into lights and heating, and how society and the world changes. Imagine you were raised on a spaceship with constant lighting, coming to a planet with night would be weird.
JackofScarlets
I remember watching Jimmy Neutron and he had a device that could scan a foreign language on a wall and translate it instantly and I thought that was so crazy and that is super futuristic. But now our smartphones can do that.
poochyenarulez
The other day, I was watching a TV show in the living room, and I wanted to go into the kitchen to make food, and also do laundry. But, I didn’t want to miss my show. So, using quick connect, I mirrored the TV to my phone so I could move around the house, and still watch my show. It’s one of those “I’m living in the future” moments every time I realize I can watch TV on my phone. Knowing what TV used to be, it’s pretty incredible to have a freedom like that.
TheGameSlave2
It’s crazy we can hop on a plane and end up across the country or to an entirely different country in a matter of hours! Travel used to take days of driving or way back when wagon travel. We’ve come so far advancing air travel and technology, yet people get pissed when their giant air transportation machine is delayed for thirty minutes.
PawnTakesRook
I travel a lot for work. I book flights, cars and hotels without having to talk to a single person.
I can pick up a rental at an airport parked with the keys in it and my name on it and just jump in and show ID at the boom gate.
Being a frequent flyer I get priority boarding, lounge access, and some airports even have side entrances with their own security that drop you straight in the lounge.
If I didn’t travel all the time for work, lots of this I would have found amazing, hell only a bit over a year ago I would have thought it was so cool. Now while it’s nice, I’m usually just tired, and happy not to stand as long. I do still marvel how lucky I am to have an interesting job, and how it all works for me to be able to do what I do.
It will be nice when I can take a long vacation on points alone.
Oh yeah and I fly around every week in a tin can, crazy. Would be nice if they could make the seats more comfortable though. They can still use space foam in the air right?… right?
Roentgenographer
Having kids made me slow down (like really slow, takes me 4 hours to complete a 4 minute task) & appreciate the magic in the world. We sat today and waited for butterflies to land on us.
bookwitchx
If you had to track your foods back to their origin, you’d be astounded. For breakfast, your orange juice came from Florida, your banana from Ecuador, and your coffee from Kenya. You could never explain how your breakfast cereal was created. And the whole thing cost you nearly nothing.
StrictlyForTheBirds
Electricity wasn’t the norm in most of America at the turn of the century. Cities got electricity poles in the 20s (almost a century ago!), which was also when radio shows came on air.
The Tennessee Valley Administration brought electricity to the hillbillies in the 30s.
In the 50s, television exploded onto the scene, having the President speak face to face with viewers, news reports on major events (like the Little Rock 9 and the Korean War), and glamorous advertisements.
In 1972, video games were introduced, with Pong’s release in 1972.
The first major handheld computer/game system was the Gameboy (released in 1989).
MagFrag5891
We are able to reutilize the body parts of someone to substitute that part in another person to restore his body functions. That’s just beyond amazing.
jubat
Out at lunch the other day, two people start discussing the population of a certain area; they disagree and start arguing about it. Takes about 2 minutes before one of them pulls out their phone and just looks it up.
15 years ago, that would’ve been an hour long conversation with no conclusion.
Project2r
When the leaves change colour in the fall. I had a friend come up from Central America, she remarked on how beautiful all the colours were… She was right. I just took it for granted.
ihatepeoples
In my pocket I have a computer more powerful than the one that took up the size of a room and sent astronauts to the moon. On top of that, I can get almost all of the information that mankind has ever had from it without physically connecting to anything. It really makes me realize how much we have access to that we often don’t think about.
tubzyy
As a hiker who has forded many a ‘small’ creek with a pack on…
We have so many awesome wonderful bridges. Cross dozens of bodies of water in a few days without even really noticing.
BeardsuptheWazoo
For the vast, vast majority of human history, even in the modern era, at least one adult in the household was solely committed to going out and getting new fresh food for the day.
Now, you can stock up food for an entire household for weeks all at once. Not even royalty had that.
seancurry1
We made a block of metal that moves giant 1 or 2 ton chunks of metal, and works by turning liquified dinosaurs and trees into explosions, yet we have refined their design so much that we feel comfortable putting these explodey dinosaur fire machines a couple feet away from our bodies for extended amounts of time and rely on them in our daily life.
MrStarfox64
Every day, thousands of people in a city perform an un-rehearsed dance using giant metal costumes run by combustion reactions, performed at high speeds, based on a basic trust of hundreds of people they’ve never met to follow some arbitrary rules and not mess it up and kill someone. All of thus is considered normal, even mundane.
gavinimmer
When we are young we take perfect health for granted. Now, I have bad knee arthritis and no health insurance. I can barely walk, but even 15 years ago I could work 3 twelve hour shifts in a row as a floor nurse.
But, really I am lucky. As I age I have seen too many people “draw a bad card” and get terminal cancer out of the blue. I am 57 and if I can get surgery, I should have a normal lifespan and mobility.
But I also figure that perfect health & no worries is everyone’s right when they are young.
Catmom2004
I grew up in Polynesia, and we have wetter and dryer parts of the year but no completely different seasons. I grew up without ever seeing the leaves change color, having a white Christmas, or anything like that. Every winter, I fantasized about snow. It was so strange to walk through pouring rain, watching steam rise from the hot ground, and imagine that somewhere in the world, that water would have come down as fluffy flakes of ice. I knew seasons existed because other people told me about them and I’d seen it on TV and in movies, but if it weren’t for that I never would’ve believed they were real. It sounded too surreal.
Last year I moved to a seasonal climate and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. There are so many amazing little details I never dreamed of – the wind in autumn, the intoxicating warmth of the spring sun, the shocking fluffiness and delicateness of new snow as it falls on your cheeks. The smells are the most amazing part – I never knew each season has such a distinct smell. I honestly felt like a child seeing the world for the first time. My new friends thought it was hilarious and cute to watch me freak out over every new development, and be moved nearly to tears by the first snow because “It’s like those Christmas movies came to life.”
People always tell me how jealous they are that I got to “grow up in paradise,” but honestly, I feel like they’re taking some amazing things for granted. I get it, the cold can be a pain, but remember that there are people in the world who have never gotten to jump in a leaf pile or make a snow angel. Seasons are amazing!
almond_hunter
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