Sometimes, when I can’t seem to fall asleep, I imagine my future home and the people I might live in it with. A leafy terracotta patio where, before any kids are awake, I will read the morning news over a steaming cup of coffee. Mahogany shelves filled with our favorite books, a couple of which I hope to have written myself. A refrigerator with Christmas cards, wedding invitations, and graduation announcements pinned with magnets that remind us of the faraway places we’ve been together.
I know that occasional late-night dreaming will not magically produce an enriched existence. However, in this head-spinning digital age, the tools needed to grow an organically full life are losing their luster. The social network’s addictive nature relies on blurring the line between consumption and creation. Algorithms that seem to pick up on our every interest guide us toward platforms and apps like Goodreads, Letterboxd, and Beli (perhaps Substack, too) that cement the ritual of performance in how we engage with what we read, watch, and even eat. Despite the temptation to believe these virtual canvases will endure, our online selves are fragile, even illusory.
I am a prime offender of the charges I have just laid out. I save social media posts hawking “Essential Southern Gothic Novels” or “The Canon of Great African Films” and feel a rush of dopamine without reading a single page or pressing play on any of those movies. On a recent school trip to Mauritius, I posted photos from a shared album that depict sunsets I never saw and bike rides I didn’t go on. This is the difference between the online universe and real life. While it is unlikely that anyone will question the verity of an Instagram sunset, I cannot take pride in a sprawling personal library if I have never read any of its books.
The coin of the realm, then, must be collected through a more analog way of encountering the world. I have found that the most memorable people, a lot like the most memorable homes, are intensely singular. I might compare a leafy terracotta patio to a friend who refuses to settle for a hastily-written text message in lieu of a handwritten thank you note. Perhaps mahogany shelves teeming with books are like a professor who spends time reading things they don’t care about for the sake of better understanding their particular niche. In other words, singularity manifests itself in those rare instances when authenticity and effort sync, each catalyzing the other.
Fortunately, I believe this involved manner of being (far from effortless) is beneficial. Writing and journaling, meditating and thinking, reading books and poems: all of these things have been empirically proven to enhance happiness and clarity of mind.
The slow, analog process of creating a rich existence—that is, the quest to become more like these singular individuals (and homes)—is a path that I will no doubt deviate from at times for the sake of convenience or conformity. Perhaps on those nights when sleep evades me, I should turn on my bedside lamp and pick up some of that Essential Southern Gothic Reading or put on a Great African Film. One thing at a time.