Sometimes it feels like the world quietly turned a corner in the early 2000s and we are still living in the aftermath. Before that there was more space to breathe. You left the house and you were just gone. No constant updates. No need to explain yourself. Freedom felt physical like riding bikes until the streetlights came on or getting lost on purpose and trusting you would find your way back.
Then something shifted. Screens moved from the background to the center of everything. Phones became portals we stared into all day. Computers stopped being tools and started becoming places we lived. Even when nothing was happening we were waiting for something to happen. A message. A headline. A notification. Silence started to feel uncomfortable instead of peaceful.
Spiritually it changed too. There used to be more mystery and more trust in the unseen. After that fear crept in. War was suddenly everywhere on the news. Bad stories played on a loop. Danger felt constant even when it was far away. The world started to feel smaller and heavier at the same time. It was harder to believe things would just work out when every worst case scenario was right there on the screen.
I do not think we lost something all at once. It was more like a slow trade. We traded presence for connection. Depth for speed. Inner quiet for endless information. And now a lot of us are trying to remember what it felt like before that shift. Not to go backward but to bring some of that freedom and spirit back into a world that forgot how to look up.
