Our lives have started to turn into something that could genuinely resemble a cheap novel — reaching extremes in ways we hadn’t imagined.
Politically, technologically, socially — in every sense — we are heading toward extremes that lack depth but progress at dizzying speed.
As if the pressure individuals put on themselves weren’t enough, this whirlwind of sociological change leaves no time to even process what’s happening.
To visualize it:
Imagine your inner world — your thoughts, everything in your mind — as a circle.
Then draw a second circle outside of it to represent your life and the people you interact with.
Draw a third circle around that, symbolizing the country you live in.
Then draw one more circle beyond that, representing the world you live in.
Twenty years ago, for something in the outermost circle to impact your innermost circle would take years.
Now, a disturbance in that outermost circle can affect your life before morning comes.
The circle is shrinking.
That’s why you’re struggling to interpret and make sense of what you’re experiencing. It’s not your fault — there are simply far more stimuli now, on a global scale, than you’re used to.
As a result, you have serious trouble focusing on any one thing, and because you see that everyone around you is going through the same, you assume this is normal.
But perhaps the most valuable piece of information I can offer in this article is this: Nothing is normal, my friends.
‘Normal’ is no longer your normal.
