The Lure of Convenience

“I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards, I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, ‘Are you still typing?’ Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, ‘OK, I’ll send you the pages.’ Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, ‘Where are you going?’ I say, ‘Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.’ And she says, ‘You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.’ And I say, ‘Hush.’ So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different. Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something.”- Kurt Vonnegut

I think about this often. How succinctly Vonnegut had captured this sentiment decades before technology had permeated every sphere of our lives. In an era where everything is optimized for maximum efficiency, we are irritated by even mild inconveniences. This corrosion of our ability to empathize, to fully be human, to tolerate and withstand inconveniences and difficulties, bothers me. It’s bothersome because it corrupts our ability to feel joy and take in pleasure. Life’s many inconveniences make it beautiful and worth living, once they are taken away we are left with a cold, mechanical existence where we never have to rely on anybody for anything. The allure of an automated environment where everything is easy, accessible and fool-proof is inevitable, we all want it easy but easy does not necessarily make us happy. It’s like those cautionary tales of people who work really hard to get to where they want to be and then fall into complete misery. It seems ironic but the truth is we don’t want more, we like the idea of more but a simple life is a good one, despite what we’re led to believe by the torrents of advertising constantly flooding our senses with a million things we could do without. To be happy with less is the secret to a good life. This is closely tied to deliberately choosing an inconvenient life, we have to deliberately choose this option because otherwise, we’ll live fully automated lives like everybody else around us because it has sadly, become the norm. It means going out to buy groceries instead of having them delivered, it means asking someone for directions instead of looking at the GPS, it means trusting your gut and not the reviews you see online; you open yourself to experience life more fully instead of choosing what is “safe” or “approved”. Inconvenience leaves room for chance which leaves room for a whole spectrum of emotions, including joy. It won’t always be pleasant, sometimes you’ll wish you had gone to that restaurant with 4.6 stars instead but you learn something from your choices, and you understand yourself and the environment better instead of bubble-wrapping yourself against the unpleasantness of existence. It’s important to experience discomfort, it builds your resilience and makes you feel more alive. The truth is by choosing the “safer” option we aren’t really choosing safety, we’re choosing to numb out all fear and worry for something tepid, lukewarm and mild, you may or may not love it but you won’t hate it either. The guarantee here is centricity, to be mild, to not have any strong emotions rise out of you. By trying something new, you’re only risking disappointment, nothing else, if you do hate it, voila! hate is a far more awakening feeling than tepidity or indifference. If you hate something enough, you will want to change it. Hate seldom reduces someone to passivity, it usually invokes action.

All in all, it’s just better for us, as people to be deeply involved in our lives and in our community. To do the thing that works and not the “easy thing”. Life has become so “easy” in the last decade or so but is anybody really happy? Previous generations lived through far worse but were also far happier because they lived, they had to be willing to risk discomfort and unpleasantness because there was no other choice, so they lived life in all its fullness and as a result were happier. You savour your blessings, you look past the bad stuff and you definitely don’t sweat the small stuff because you’re so immersed in just…living..

My greatest wish for myself and everyone is to live lives that are tough but rewarding, so deeply fulfilling because of how maddening it was to get where you need to be. I am not a masochist or a sadist, I don’t wish unhappiness upon anyone (or myself) but I do wish for all of us to experience the breadth of life more deeply, feel the full stretch of every limb of experience and cloak ourselves in the sheer magic of living.