Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, in which writers recall wisdom from the past that we should commit to heart. Last week, Rod Dreher wrote about the enchantment of Europe, where even cynical atheists can see the beauty of the Church. This week, Luke Burgis writes about a feeling you might recognize: a sense that everything is moving far too quickly and you can never spare the time to just stop and look at the world.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
—W.H. Davies
My wife loves to tease me about how often I stand and stare out of windows. She caught our 17-month-old daughter standing in front of one the other day, mimicking me with her tiny hands clasped behind her back. But for part of my life, I lost that ability to stop and just look at the world. It’s an ability that I didn’t fully appreciate until it was gone.
I don’t know exactly when I lost it but, prior to the pandemic, I had the growing realization that everything was moving too fast for me—and I couldn’t keep up. The progression of my dad’s Alzheimer’s was happening fast. Friends got married and divorced, and children were growing old too fast. The days went by too quickly. I thought, Is this just what getting older feels like?
Even during the quiet of Covid, when I was holed up in a house on Lake Michigan, I felt no reprieve. The video calls increased. Everyone expected more availability, more responsiveness. There were a few days when, inspired by the beauty of the lake, I would break free from my screen-based work and position myself in front of one of the windows, clasping my hands loosely in front of me, fingers interlaced and resting at my waist, a posture that felt something like prayer. For a brief moment, a flicker of light stirred in my soul—before the anxiety set in again. I was falling behind.
I think digital scrolling induces a kind of blackout. Not in the way alcohol causes one, but in the sense that time disappears without anything worth remembering. There are days I can barely recall—not because they were traumatic, but because they were simply unmemorable. A digital fog. Hours passed without touching anything real. No texture. No depth. Just input.
I kept telling myself that this was just a particularly busy season of life, that things would ease up in a few months. But those months never arrived—only more demands, more difficult news, more responsibility. The future didn’t open up the way I imagined. It narrowed into the truth: This is the life I have, and the time to live it is now. But for many months, which ran into years, I felt stuck like one feels stuck to the wall of that famous carnival ride, the Gravitron—everything spinning so fast that gravity pushes you in directions you didn’t intentionally choose, and you are forced against a wall.