The Rush
Why the hell are you always in a hurry?
You watch movies on 1.5x, listen to voice notes at 2x, and want to make and spend more money than your country’s GDP before you turn 25. Where exactly are you going in such a rush?
Jesus.
I get it, it’s not entirely your fault. Before your frontal lobe was even fully cooked, someone decided it would be fun to create social media platforms that trained your brain to need constant stimulation. Cue TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts — the fast-food version of knowledge.
Life is short, sure. But that’s exactly why you should slow down and be intentional.
We live in an age where “information overload” is marketed as “diversifying your knowledge.” In five minutes of scrolling, you can learn the name of the latest crypto app, find out which celebrities are fighting, watching an influencer’s wedding, join women in Asia demanding justice, catch a protest in your own country, learn about a new song, and see a dance routine to replace the one you just memorized last week. And when you finally close the app, you’ve consumed so much… you don’t actually know anything.
And here’s the thing, you only feel the need to rush when you’ve convinced yourself there’s too much to do.
“Oh, I’ll just watch this movie on 3x speed because I have content to create, lunch to make, a 20-minute nap to take (yes, you’re rushing your naps now), a book to read, assignments to finish, laundry to fold…” And when you do finish the movie, you hop straight onto TikTok to search the title so you can watch theories and “not be left behind” effectively wasting the rest of the time.
No wonder you end the day exhausted, as if you worked a double shift at life.
Speed culture has seeped so deep that some of you put 10-second TikToks on 2x. For what? To squeeze more micro-content into your already fried brain? If you stopped to think about it, and I know you haven’t, you’d notice you’ve rewired your attention span. Now you can’t sit through a lecture without itching for it to end. You can’t finish a 15-minute task without feeling restless. You crave something new every single minute. You don’t even spend time with your own thoughts anymore, no time to plan, to reflect, to take deliberate steps toward the life you claim you want.
Don’t worry though when you’re struggling with poverty, it wouldn’t fail to start each morning with a fresh serving of “shege,” that you’ll actually never run out of problems to keep you distracted.
In writing, it is advised that think pieces on real life problems ought to end with some sort of solution, but I’m kind of in a haste to write this and go to school so my brain isn’t settled enough to even cook up anything other than the desire to spread the good news about us being cooked.
So yeah, have a fun day and try to slow down today.