Today in London, whilst listening to music on my headphones, I had a deep and profound moment which ended up with me deciding to write my first thread Thread.

It all starts off with me catching the tube and having numerous stops in front of me. The underground was empty, so I sat down with the intention of enjoying the long ride which awaited me.

I put my headphones on, opened Spotify and shuffled my endless liked songs playlist. First song comes on: it’s a skip. Second: skip. Third: sounds good for about 45 seconds, then turns into a skip too. OK, seems like music is not my thing today.

Fine, lets go with a podcast. Few minutes in and yeah that same fucking feeling of boredom and insatiability hits again. Oh, this has happened to me a countless number of times, and I am sure it has happened to you too.

As I said, the journey was long, and I was probably not even half way into my ride.

My journey had become hell, and whilst understanding jackshit about the podcast or song I was listening to, I was getting extremely agitated about the fact of not being able to enjoy this time for myself.

I turn off my headphones, take a breather and start thinking about what had just happened. I start to slowly dig some interesting thoughts up.

Technology had just given me the chance to enjoy any of the music in the world, and in that moment no song could fill up my desire.

I then start thinking of my parents and how they listened to music. They didn’t have access to any song they wanted in a matter of seconds.

They had to buy a vinyl/record. They had to have and prepare their record player. If they wanted to listen to a specific song they had to position the needle of their player at a specific track band of the record.

Say they wanted to listen to a song again? Ayy, the number of times I’ve listen to a song on repeat… Well, they probably had to get up from the coach they were on and go through this long process again.  

I don’t know why, but I got the feeling my parents probably gave much more importance to the moments in which they listened to music compared to me. Why? Because music wasn't accessible in a matter of seconds.

I truly cannot tell you how many times, after having listened to music, I end up feeling like I have actually listened to none. Anyways…

Another similar example: when studying. You cannot imagine the number of research papers I read and re-read without truly understanding them whilst I was writing my graduation thesis. And how much time I wasted because I never thoroughly grasped their meaning.

Or how many research papers I downloaded after having skimmed read the abstract thinking “I’ll look at them after”.

Or, with regards to normal university life, how many times I had to re-watch a video explaining some simple thing I had seen and gone through thousands of times - just recently integration by parts.

Why is this? Why do I behave this way? I got to the conclusion this behavior is probably due to me having access to any of the aforementioned (research paper or YT video) whenever I want.

What about my parents? My parents had to go to the library, search for the paper they needed, and then read it and understand it.

I don’t know why, I have no evidence, but I feel 100% sure that that they valued that moment with the research paper they needed much more than all the time I looked at any of my research papers.

And same goes for something they did not understand in class. They had no Youtube or Google. They had to find the appropriate textbook in the library, or anyways open up a book they had with them, to get to the answer.

The pain, struggle and time needed to find what they were looking for probably led to them giving much more value to that moment in time with that item. Leading them to a full, or at minimum greater (than mine), understanding of what they had in front of them.

They valued that moment with the textbook or research paper much more than the value I give to the moment with the the analogous YouTube video or research paper.

Okay so that was that: by the time I got out of the rabbit hole I was under my friend’s house. I thought I had got to some pretty interesting things, and decided I would write a thread. A week has passed, and here it is.

Might as well get to a conclusion (TL/DR): I think that whilst making our life SO MUCH easier technology has paradoxically taken away our ability to enjoy and value moments of our life. It has allowed us to give so much for granted.

Maybe next time on the tube I will just sit down and think, I hope so at least. And, lastly, if there is one direction I would like to see technology move towards it is in helping us users give back value to time.

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