Remembering my aunts and uncles from my childhood, a lot of the older people today don’t seem to have as much energy – I come from the US.
I’ve noticed people can be erratic and easily agitated now. Almost everyone I know in their 40s and 50s is angry all the time. Heavy drinking. Not able to process new information very well.
My uncle had a kid at 50 and played with her non-stop. I don’t know anyone capable of that now.
Am I the only one seeing this?
Not the only one.
I think there’s a number of causes, but the biggest one is pretty simple- the death of boredom.
You are stuck in an airport waiting for your flight. It leaves in an hour. What do you do?
You whip out your phone and fire up your favorite social media and scroll. And the hour disappears.
Or maybe you watch a movie. Or read the news. Or whatever- your digital mental babysitter will entertain you.
What you don’t do, is be bored. Boredom is now totally optional, and by default it is suppressed and must be actively chosen.
This sounds like a good thing, but the reality is boredom is a time that’s vital for our minds to process and dream and imagine. And we killed that.
So that time when someone might contemplate taking up a new hobby, contemplate a new project, contemplate building something cool? Gone.