Sometimes the struggle is the whole point
The other day, I swiped across the off-white surface of the book I was reading. Nothing happened. I tapped harder on a single word, hoping the definition might pop up and save me from having to reach up onto the shelf and pull down the dictionary for an analog search. Sometimes, I love convenience.
But other times, convenience reduces friction and makes life feel too slippery.
Sometimes, it is only inconvenience that gives us a chance to connect to one another, to break out of our insulated bubbles of our Spotify channels, our podcast stream, to speak to the person next to us, say when the internet goes down or our phone battery dies.
But it wasn’t until I read Tim Wu’s wonderful essay entitled “The Tyranny of Convenience” that I got it what was irking me about convenience:
“Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. But climbing a mountain is different from taking the tram to the top, even if you end up at the same place. We are becoming people who care mainly or only about outcomes. We are at risk of making most of our life experiences a series of trolley rides.”
Does this resonate for you?
Inconveniently yours,
Amy
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