Is the title of this post quite melodramatic and somewhat attention-seeking? Most definitely, but it speaks to a great concern that I have. The rise of hyper-consumable “content” is making our lives much shorter than they would have been before. The length of our lives is not necessarily determined by how old we are when we die, but I would argue that our lives’ length is determined by the amount of novelty.
Let us take two different people, examine them, and determine who lived the longest. One person lived to be seventy years old. This said person worked as an accountant for the majority of their life, and they never traveled, often going home after work and watching the same few sitcoms or true crime shows that they’ve been watching for years. Now, a second person died at thirty-six. They were a civil engineer who had helped construct multiple different projects within their community. They supervised the construction of bridges, dams, and roads. After work, they enjoyed listening to a new album that they’d never heard or watching an avant-garde film. They also budgeted to travel as much as they could, and even in tough times, they would take the chance to try something new at any opportunity. For example, get a chai latte at Starbucks instead of their usual white chocolate mocha. While this is quite a trivial example, it demonstrates the small steps that people can take to extend their lives.
Life is not a game about numbers; it is all about crafting the most memories. Someone who does the same thing every day will have little to say on their deathbed. They will look back and only see a few days of their lives, as all the others became the same thing. A person with a lot of experience—and by experience, I do not mean extreme sports or traveling the world, but novelty—will have too much to say when faced with death. Ultimately, the years lived do not matter. What was contained in those years is truly the determining factor in the length of someone’s life.
Now, why did I mention TikTok? Well, my mornings recently have been quite unfulfilling, to say the least. I have created a bad habit for myself of waking up at 10 AM, scrolling until 11 AM, then getting ready to go to the gym. While at the moment this hour of scrolling is quite enjoyable, I cannot tell you what I even absorbed or saw an hour afterward, effectively losing an hour of my life. It is a common thing for people to claim they lost time in their lives after doing something that ended in failure, but that is simply not the case. If something is remembered, then they lost nothing except perhaps some ego, but if someone simply remembers nothing of a period of time, then that is lost. Their lives became shorter.
While TikTok is a great example of this idea, it is a somewhat easy target. We all know TikTok is slowly chipping away at our time, and we gain nothing from dedicating hours to scrolling. Nobody is claiming that this is something they desire doing; no one intends on toiling away for hours. The algorithm is a vacuum that is slowly consuming us all with ADHD-infecting “content.” However, a lack of novelty is much more egregious in our everyday lives than exclusively TikTok. When you go to McDonald’s, what do you get? What did you get last time you ate there and before that? I would guess most of the time a person gets the same items as they did before. When someone goes to see a movie, they will likely pick something that they are already familiar with, whether it be a sequel or something from a familiar studio rather than an indie film. When going anywhere familiar, even if it is not based on a schedule, people will usually pick the same route. This is a deadly disease, and its symptoms are everywhere. We are all infected, and our ignorance of it causes it to kill us quickly. It is called complacency.
Our deadliest and fastest killer has a simple cure, and I have already discussed it briefly. Novelty is our greatest asset to living a meaningful and long life. Novelty does not have to mean anything productive whatsoever. I encourage everyone to “waste” time, but it should be used to explore. Instead of sitting on the couch and watching the same rerun of The Office, try a new show. When choosing what to cook each week, instead of always choosing spaghetti, try to cook a bolognese. Challenge yourself at every opportunity to do something new. While I am no self-help guru and wouldn’t want to be, this has been affecting me positively every single day.
Let me go over what was new today. I decided to go to McDonalds for lunch, shop a little, go to the gym, and read at a cafe. I ended up getting a burger with bacon on it and BLT sauce. I do not usually enjoy a bacon cheeseburger, but I was curious. I loved it, although the rampant MSG probably helped the most and not the high-quality bacon. I then went to HomeGoods and bought a Leuchtturm 1917 journal, which had amazing quality and a great price. After the gym, with the usual workout routine, I went to Etcetera Cafe, got an English toffee-flavored black coffee for the first time, and read Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka for an hour and finished it. I tried many new things today, and today felt long.
Everyone should start being more intentional with their days, not necessarily to achieve a goal, but to see and sense everything. We, as people, tend to harp on the past or hope for the future, but our memories are created in the present. Memories are the greatest factor in living a long life. With that being said, please be aware of how much time you are using, which you won’t remember, myself included.