Most of us have become remarkably skilled at postponing our lives.

We tell ourselves that things will settle down after this week, after the project is finished, after the kids get through this phase, after the house is organized, after the vacation, after retirement, or perhaps after some mysterious future moment when the universe finally stops sending us things to deal with.

Of course, that moment never arrives.

Life keeps coming. There is another email, another appointment, another problem to solve, another headline to read and, apparently, an unlimited supply of things our phones desperately believe we need to know. Meanwhile, the day we were waiting to enjoy quietly disappears.

The Problem Is Not That Life Is Busy

Life has always contained demands, uncertainty and interruption. What has changed is how easily our attention can now be pulled away from the life directly in front of us.

We have built habits around distraction. We reach for the phone without deciding to reach for it. We check email without needing to check email. We replay conversations that ended hours ago. We rehearse problems that have not happened yet. We can sit beside someone we love while mentally being somewhere else entirely.

None of this requires a character flaw. It simply requires repetition.

Do something often enough and the brain gets efficient at doing it automatically. That is useful when we are learning........

© The Saratogian