ISSUE 987 - April 2024



I spent four weeks in Boston with my daughter, Stephanie, and her husband, Matt. They are feverishly working on finishing home renovation projects on their Quincy house so they can sell it and move toward living their dream—a house in Maine with land and the hope of a simpler, slower-paced life.

Steph, covered in sawdust, and I, covered in paint splotches, started a thought-provoking, baby-boomer-to-millenial conversation.

We agreed that the world couldn't possibly go any faster—or we hoped it could not. She commented that she always feels overwhelmed. It struck me that at 36, she feels the same way I do (no, you don't get to know my age).

With the relentless onslaught of constant information bombarding our brains and the pressure of immediacy about everything, it's no wonder we feel like we are in fight-or-flight all the time. It is overwhelming and exhausting—more than we can handle.

It begs the question of where we go from here, how much more information can we absorb, when will we slow down, and is it even possible at this point?

The truth is that this fast-paced world is affecting every age group. But I believe those of us who experienced a slower-paced world miss it and are very sad about how life is now—at least, I know I am.

I went into baby boomer splaining mode about what a contrast the world is to when I was her age and younger.

Getting a letter is a great example. I waited three or four weeks for a letter from my sister, who lived in Australia. When the letter arrived, I'd drop everything, sit quietly, and consume the words like morsels of the best cake ever. Then, I'd take pen and paper, craft a letter, and mail it when I could get to the post office. There was nothing immediate about it, and it was special.

The number one culprit in our fast-paced world is our all-in-one smartphone device. Remember when the phone was at home or hanging on a wall at the gas station? Documenting anything required a still camera, a video camera, and possibly an audio recorder. Talking to someone away from home required pocket change. It was clumsy, slow, and cumbersome. (The operative word there is slow.) Smartphones allow us to do it all in seconds, so it’s easy to overdo it.

You might be saying wait a minute, social media is the culprit. Social media is the hungry beast, and the smartphone feeds it.