How Technology is Killing Our Spontaneity
My parents often speak of their teenage and early adulthood as a time when they lived in the moment, followed their feet, and things just happened. Having grown up in India in the 1980s, they often recount serendipitous events where a neighborhood friend would stop by downstairs and give a holler, “Mathkari! Come downstairs, let’s go play cricket!”. Playing cricket in the street at any time of day was a quintessential memory of their youth, they tell me.
The first 22 years of my life have looked nothing similar. Sure, I play sports with friends as well but the events leading up to my meetups are so different, and not in a good way. Let’s try to recreate this same event, in the United States, in the year 2021.
I want to play tennis but I can’t just walk over to my friends’ place. It’s not because I’m lazy. It’s because I physically can’t. They live close by yet are separated by a highway thanks to zoning laws. So I decided to drive over. Well, scratch that. That would look weird. No one just shows up at people’s houses. What if I barge in on their “personal space”? That’s just not the norm in this time and space.
Our replacement for this form of spontaneous communication is, of course, texting. Wait, what? Texting is not spontaneous by its very nature. Responses will and should take anywhere from 5 minutes to 24 hours. If the response is immediate, that means we are staring and checking our phones 24/7 and that we are never enjoying the moment.
The next most reliable alternative is calling albeit the fact that it is something people are very reluctant to partake in. What if they talk too long? Hearing feelings and emotions in a voice is too much to deal with for many. Yet, it is somewhat acceptable and so I give the friend a call.
“Hey man, want to play tennis?” I ask.
“Oh dude I’d love to! But I have plans tonight, maybe sometime this week?”
“For sure! How’s tomorrow?”
“I actually have plans but I’m most likely free Wednesday. I’ll text you!”
And so my spontaneous desire to play tennis has turned into a plan. I still get to play tennis but now it has been added to the calendar and is no longer an “in the moment” thing. Something fun that could have been simple and easy to do now somehow puts me in a headspace similar to that of work. When Wednesday comes around, another friend spontaneously texts me asking if I want to go to pottery night with her. I check my texts as I enter the elevator because I have lost my ability to withstand boringness.
The mind is volatile and has changing interests. Maybe now I do want to try going to pottery but I’m already locked into a plan. I could do something I could not do in the pre-cell phone era. People are always checking their phones and a simple text of “Got tied up at work dude, want to reschedule?” would get the job done. Flaking is easier than ever but I decide to uphold my commitments. However, it comes at the cost of sacrificing my spontaneity.
Unless we happen to live with all our best friends, these behavioral patterns are likely to make planners of us all. Our social lives now look eerily similar to work outlook calendars. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but it has its trade-offs. We don’t know exactly how we will feel tomorrow when the time to act on those plans arrives and a yearning to break free from schedule emerges. Sometimes out of fear of being left alone in our free time, we may overbook ourselves and not leave room to be alone. On other occasions, we may under-plan and feel a longing for companionship.
Some people listen to their mind’s whims and cancel last plans last minute leaving their friends feeling betrayed and with a constant need to check their phones for updates to plans. Others adhere to plans so much that there is no breathing room to explore the here and now.
It is unfortunately impossible to reverse the stroke of time and go back completely to pre-technology days of spontaneous hang-outs. However, there are some concrete actions we can do to allow us to live more spontaneously and in the moment.
- Leave sometime without any plans at all. When everyone always has plans, it may seem disheartening to have nothing going on. However, this will allow your mind to explore and break the mold and it will give your spontaneous friends a chance to set up spontaneous events. Be careful to be technology-free during this time. Otherwise, you might find yourself just mindlessly scrolling the internet wishing you were with friends.
- Live closer to your friends and/or become friends with your neighbors. Modern cities designed for cars make this very difficult but it is still a worthwhile investment, if possible. Living with your friends allows for more spontaneous interactions and more serendipitous events.
- Text less often, Call more. Calling by nature is a more spontaneous form of communication and the closest modern equivalent to knocking on someone’s door. It is information-rich allowing you to feel the other person’s emotions and it demands an instant response. The latency of texting drives us to keep constantly checking our phones and prevents us from living in the moment.
While recognizing the value of spontaneity, it is important to not give up planning entirely. Planning allows us to connect with those that live far away and it allows us to take control of time better than ever. However, balancing it out with time that is truly free time, time with no plans at all gives the mind space for expression and creativity.
