There’s really nothing stopping you from joining them.

Also, the Amish do appreciate technology. There was this time I saw an Amish kid and his dad in the mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and then slide back together again.

The boy asked, ‘What is this, Father?’

The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, ‘Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don’t know what it is.’

While the boy and his father were watching with amazement, a fat old lady in a wheel chair moved up to the moving walls and pressed a button.

The walls opened, and the lady rolled between them into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched the small numbers above the walls light up sequentially. They continued to watch until it reached the last number. and then the numbers began to light in the reverse order.

Finally the walls opened up again and a gorgeous 24-year-old blond stepped out. The father, not taking his eyes off the young woman, said quietly to his son…

‘Go get your Mother.’

When you interact with Amish people, they aren’t exactly bundles of bubbly joy 24/7.

Being a human is hard, nobody ever said it was supposed to be easy. In Buddhism, even, the first of their four noble truths is that life is suffering. This does not mean there are not ways out of suffering, or that there are not also joys.

Anyways though, we’re all experiencing the human condition. The grass does indeed tend to appear greener on the other side of the fence, but that does not necessarily mean it is. Though I will say that going out in nature does tend to make me, personally, feel happier. That’s something we can do regardless of our use of technology though, with some discipline and conscious decision making you can have the best of both worlds.