presence

On trains I watch faces written in the script of their errands and think: each of us is being auditioned by reality for the role of ourselves. Most days we get the part. On the days we don’t, the world is generous and miscasts us as somebody kinder or braver or more foolish than we planned

e don’t try to be important. We try not to become scenery to each other. Once a month we do a civic tenderness: we return a rogue shopping cart to a corral, sweep a stoop that isn’t ours, carry a stranger’s catastrophe for twelve minutes and set it down without advice. I am a liar. I don’t have any friends. But I like to believe I have and,... See more

Death starts visiting like a polite accountant. We talk monthly. I write a two-sentence obituary for myself with no achievements in it; I throw out a box of things that were supposed to prove I had lived: lanyards, plastic, a faded wristband that believed in me for forty-eight hours. I clean a drawer with the calm of someone who knows the coroner... See more

The result of having your day punctuated by these notifications is that your attention is constantly intercutting between the real world and the virtual one, so that your life becomes a book in a windstorm just like your feed.

This creates problems of its own. Continually dividing your attention between two worlds means you can never fully settle in... See more

The power of new experiences to stick in our memory would explain why studies have consistently found evidence for the oddball effect, a phenomenon where a surprising stimulus presented among predictable stimuli is perceived to last longer. Recent research has found that the stimulus that immediately follows the surprising stimulus is also... See more

Slowing time begins with refusing these ersatz experiences, for only the real thing is weighty enough to anchor itself in memory. Fortunately, there are simple ways to experience authentic salience.

For instance, when faced with a choice of experiences, choose the option that’s most likely to lead to a good story. Read books instead of scrolling... See more

The opposite of a maze is a route, and a route through time is a story. This is because stories are linear and syntagmatic — each moment of the tale semantically follows from the previous — and this collective meaningfulness anchors the whole thing in memory. This is why studies have consistently found that people are much better at memorising... See more

But what explains this “Lethe effect”? Theoretically, a social media feed should heighten awareness and memory, and dilate time, because it selects for content that’s exciting, outrageous, and scary. And yet we seldom remember such content. The reason for this discrepancy is simple: when every post is alarming, your brain quickly becomes... See more

Sometimes an experience can seem brief in the moment but long in memory, and vice versa. A classic example is the “holiday paradox”: while on vacation, time speeds by because you’re so overwhelmed by new experiences that you don’t keep track of time. But when you return from your vacation, it suddenly feels longer in retrospect, because you made... See more