Watching Human Lives Fall Apart Through Our Phone Screens
A discourse on the ill-timed reaching middle age in the Era of Uncertainty
Like most young people, I never thought I’d get old. I was your usual young buck with a chip on his shoulder who couldn’t fathom a time when my body and mind wouldn’t be able to keep up with the high-paced demands of society.
I thought I was invincible.
Admit it, you did too.
You probably told yourself something like, “I’ll never live past thirty.” You swore it would never happen to you. You can forgive yourself if you did anything like this.
Our naive young minds couldn’t comprehend a span of time we’d only experienced a fraction of. How can you conceive of forty years when you’ve only lived eight?
It’s like trying to calculate distances in space in your imagination. All your tools of measurement are too small to come close to the vastness of the task at hand.
I always thought we would be exempt, we Millennials. I somehow naively perceived that the generation before us would be the last generation to get old. Looking back, it wasn’t an irrational conclusion.
Growing old and falling out of the social circles that keep us up to date on the latest trends was so Boomer, so Gen X, and decidedly not Millennial.
We were the first generation to grow up with revolutionary technologies in our houses for our entire lives. We don’t remember a time before the microchip was invented.
Our entire lives happened on grand display for the world to see.
From camcorders to YouTube, photos and videos have always been at our fingertips. These technologies offered immense promise—connection at lightning speeds and the ability to constantly learn. With that, it’s easy to see why some of us believed we’d never age out.
We were never disconnected from one another, you and I. But in some ways, we’re more disconnected than ever.
It’s one of those conundrums that only such a life so rich as the ones we live—in this awe-inspiring universe that we’ve awoken in—can deliver.
I’m still on Facebook. I barely use it. When I do, I always see things that unnerve me a bit. I scroll through an endless parade of human loneliness.
Jonathan* posts his latest photos of the beach or a beautiful state park. Now, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating nature. I appreciate these photos too. Gorgeous sunsets grace my Facebook feed regularly, thanks to Jonathan’s posts. But, no matter how beautiful they are, they always make me sad. Jonathan is alone in all of his pictures.
On some level, I know he merely wants to share a stunning image with people online. Sometimes, it’s just that simple. I take pictures of everything, and I upload things so others might be able to share a moment that I felt was special with me.
Sharing our experiences with others is one of the greatest joys of this splendid and brief human life. There are no crowds of one cheering on their favorite sports teams. The magic is in the unity. It’s in that electrifying feeling of experiencing a tectonic explosion of emotion inside of you alongside others.
But on another level, I know Jonathan is lonely. He’d never dare say it. It creeps through innocuous statements he makes as he tries to downplay his feelings. It’s not fashionable to turn yourself inside out to show the world what’s going on inside.
But simply to see these photos constantly splayed across my screen, without anyone else in them, is enough to make me feel that tinge of sadness. He’s getting old.
Once the life of the party, he’s on the other side of forty now, with a mortgage and responsibilities that keep him occupied. Like me, he can’t as easily blend in with the young, hip crowd. I go to bars that used to be my stomping grounds in my party days and see an endless parade of almost-familiar faces where my friends used to be.
Just like me, they’ve all moved on with their lives.
Jonathan’s feed is like a microcosm of most people I know.
Seeking connection and attention from so far away, missing the closeness of other people. You couldn’t design a more villainous system if you tried. Let’s create apps that give people the illusion of closeness and connection, an illusion that always teases that sense of closeness and connection with each new notification, comment, and like—but it never delivers.
Avatar profile pictures in the machine-contained cyberspace can’t possibly replicate the breathtaking power of human touch. The best porn in the world can’t compete with holding the person you love deeply and are immeasurably attracted to.
Thinking that there are entire generations who never knew the world before the internet age pains me.
I believe scientists have an official term for what Jonathan is going through. It’s not one of those fancy Greek or Latin words you’ll find in medical dictionaries or anything.
It’s called “getting old.”
Anticlimactic, I know.
And there’s a curious transformation that happens after you hit a certain mile marker in life.
Once the life of the party, Jonathan now spends his days lonely and isolated, thanks to the separating mechanism of social media and the internet writ large. Even without the internet, life changes. It happens in stages.
We begin as small children, so full of wonder and promise. We have our whole lives ahead of us. Then we become rebellious adolescents, pining for freedom and independence from our parents before we’re ready.
We dabble into every different subculture and personal experience as if we’re trying on t-shirts, only instead of t-shits, we try out identities, conceptions of ourselves as newly freed entities independent of our parents.
Once we finally establish that independence, we can finally coast along through the phase of life properly called maturity. Maturity is what happens when you stop chasing the world and start appreciating your tiny slice of it.
That’s when life gets wonderful.
That’s not a joke.
If you’re in your teens or twenties, believe me when I tell you that life gets becomes something majestic, a thing of greatness, once you hit your thirties, as long as you do your twenties right, anyway. You don’t have to do it perfectly. You just have to work on yourself and work through your problems a little bit every single day.
But there’s a downside. Just as you start coasting along the comfortable plane of the mature life, your friends start disappearing. They have their own lives to live, complete with responsibilities, chores, meetings, careers, spouses, and children. Eventually, you end up like Jonathan.
Everyone’s doing their own thing, and so are you. It’s lonely but stable; secure, but uneventful.
We’re aging in an ill-timed era, a time when technology, politics, and the siloization of once-universal culture pushes everyone, regardless of their age, farther and farther apart, expediting the process.
People start drifting away as you must prepare yourself for the final stage of life—old age. It’s the stage where we consummate our lives and prepare to leave this world into the great beyond.
From about forty onward, it’s a long, lonely road. You trudge it as your body falls apart, as simple things become more and more difficult with each passing day. If you’re lucky, you have someone near and dear to your heart to traverse the days with you.
But at the same time, you learn to appreciate the little things in life. Like a sunset, a beach, or a state park. You stop caring about “likes” and comments and learn how to appreciate the fact that you were lucky enough to see such beauty in the first place, let alone take a picture of it.
I know this because I am Jonathan. Maybe not literally, but I’m almost forty. Our lives are almost interchangeable. He is where I’ll be in a few years. I feel both the sting of loneliness and the awe of wonder.
And in those moments when I feel the pangs of sadness, I remind myself that there’s so much to be grateful for. This whole life didn’t have to happen, even if it must disintegrate over time. Aging is a precious reminder that every moment counts in a life that wasn’t necessary in the first place.
Each one of us was the lucky one of however many trillion sperm our fathers produced in their lifetimes. We must realize how precious this life we’ve been granted is. And we must recognize that in others.
Whenever you encounter someone else, you’re watching their lives fall apart, no matter how slowly.
But it’s never too late to reach out and make a connection, sharing experiences, no matter how brief, as a reminder that we’re still very much alive.
Joe, you have written a very poignant essay on the human journey through life. Believe me, your story is relevant for all of us, and personally, I share your feelings.
Recently, your essays and stories have been exceptionally thoughtful, and I'm sure many of your readers are appreciative.
You're one of the voices of human kindness and understanding.
Best Always,
Fred
Thank you very much, Fred. 🙏🏻