The Attention Heist

Imagine your mind is a small apartment above a coffee shop. The windows are always cracked open just a little, and without asking, strangers walk in. They drop newspapers on your table, leave half-finished thoughts on your floor, talk loudly about wars, markets, celebrities you’ve never heard of. No one knocks. They just show up.

That’s what the internet feels like now. Like hosting a party for everyone else’s noise while forgetting you never sent out invitations.

You try to check the weather. Just the weather. But five minutes later you’re reading about a border conflict in a country you couldn’t find on a map if someone paid you. Your tea’s gone cold. Your laundry’s still wet. You’ve absorbed three disasters and said nothing to anyone all day.

I’m guilty of it too.

I’ve sat in silence while my brain reenacts global collapse in perfect clarity, like it’s prepping for a Nobel Peace Prize I didn’t apply for. I know the tone of articles from outlets I’ve never trusted. I’ve memorized the rhythms of outrage.

And meanwhile—my home hums with unfinished things.

There’s this quote I saw: “Your family is broken, but you’re going to fix the world?”

It hit hard.

Because that’s the game. We take in so much noise, so much urgency, and it tricks us into feeling responsible for it all. Like empathy became a full-time job. Like peace is selfish. Like being informed means never looking away.

But maybe that’s the trick: the world keeps screaming, louder and louder, and we keep listening with no filters, no doors.

So I’ve started turning things off. Not forever. Just long enough to hear myself again. Just long enough to remember the kettle on the stove. The plants that wilt a little when I forget. The people who speak softer than the headlines.

I’m learning not to let the circus live in me. Not to let the chaos rent space in my ribs.

Some days, the world will ask for everything. But you don’t have to give it.

Not when you’re still trying to clean your own room.
Not when your life is still waiting to be lived, quietly, just below the noise.