We were never meant to live like this

There’s something tender about remembering life before the internet.

Not better in every way. Not perfect. Just… slower.

I remember riding my bike until the sun set. Calling my friend on the corded phone and arranging to meet at the corner of the gravel road I lived on at a specific time. Long stretches of boredom that somehow turned into imagination. Building forts in the backyard. Exploring. Learning. Playing.

We didn’t document our childhood. We just lived it.

And then the world shifted.

The whir of dial up modems. The glow of CRT monitors. The first time a webpage loaded, slowly, line by line, like the future being stitched together in front of you. We were old enough to remember life without it, young enough to learn it as it unfolded. We weren’t handed digital fluency. We built it.

I’ve worked in IT for 25+ years now. I love technology. I rely on it. It has shaped my career and much of my adult life.

But something feels different now.

In the last few years, I’ve felt myself being pulled back toward nature. Toward soil under my fingernails. Toward quiet mornings. Toward long walks without headphones. I’ve written about this before. The need to disconnect. The need to breathe.

It isn’t rejection. It’s recalibration.

Social media in particular feels heavy. Performative. Loud. It asks us to curate instead of simply exist. It replaces conversation with commentary. Community with metrics. Keyboard warriors firing words across the globe without ever seeing the weight land on the other side.

We were never meant to live inside a constant stream of comparison and outrage. We weren’t designed for endless scrolling, for absorbing the emotional weight of the entire world before breakfast. And let’s not kid ourselves, the world feels very heavy right now.

We were meant for eye contact. For dirt paths. For shared meals. For silence.

At the bottom of this post, I’ve included a video I found on YouTube. I know. The irony isn’t lost on me.

In it, the creator talks about the film WALL·E and the direction our world seems to be drifting toward. Humans detached from the earth. Glued to screens. Passive. Disconnected from one another and from the physical world that sustains us.

When I first watched that movie years ago, it felt exaggerated.

Now it feels uncomfortably plausible.

This isn’t a call to smash phones or abandon technology. I use it daily. It provides for my family. It enables connection across distance. I even love my home automation because it makes certain things easier. I use YouTube daily to learn new skills, find new recipes, learn about a new hobby and more. Some technology is great. But being overly addicted or entirely reliant on it is not.

We were never meant to live entirely inside it.

Maybe the answer isn’t going backward. Maybe it’s remembering.

Remembering how it felt to be unreachable for a while. To be fully present. To let boredom stretch into creativity. To let conversation breathe without distraction. Teaching our children this slower, more grounded way of living may be one of the most important gifts we can give them.

Actually, I’ve noticed something interesting lately. A lot of younger people are going back to having a corded phone. A landline. Something fixed to a wall that doesn’t travel with you, doesn’t buzz in your pocket, doesn’t follow you into every quiet space. I think that’s a beautiful thing. A small act of resistance. A reminder that not everything needs to be mobile, immediate, or constant.

As I’ve said a couple of times in this post, I don’t think all tech is bad. I just think we’ve forgotten how to hold it instead of letting it hold us. And maybe finding our way back starts with something simple.

Go outside. Leave the phone inside.
Sit in the quiet.
Grow something beautiful, or useful.
Cook meals from scratch.

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”

Maybe what we’re really searching for isn’t the next upgrade. Maybe it’s the sound of our own lives again.

Remember, you only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. Step outside, unplug when you can, grow something real with your hands, and I’ll catch you next time.

Much love,
Rob ❤️