The Noise Inside the Signal

Somewhere between the scroll and the silence,
we forgot how to hear ourselves.

---

He used to wake up with birdsong. Now it was headlines.

Before his feet even touched the floor, the world had already barged in—crammed into a rectangular screen that lit up his nightstand like a tiny sun. War. Climate. Scandal. Opinions. Click here. Read more. Be outraged.

He would tell himself he was just checking the weather.

But thirty-seven minutes later, he’d know everything about a political feud in a city he’d never visited, the latest tech collapse, and what three strangers on the internet thought about gluten. He’d scroll like it was a duty, like somehow by knowing more, he was doing something about it.

He wasn’t.

The dishes in the sink still waited. The call he should’ve made to his mother still lingered in yesterday. His thoughts, once his own, now sounded like retweets in his head.

He remembered a quote someone had shared—not even sure who anymore:
“Your family is broken, but you want to fix the world?”
It wasn’t meant to shame. Just… a mirror. The kind that doesn’t flatter.

So he began small.

Airplane mode in the morning.
Unread tabs left to die.
A walk without a podcast.
Coffee without commentary.
Questions without instant answers.

The silence was strange at first. Almost loud. But beneath the static, there was something softer. A kind of quiet intelligence, whispering things he used to know—
that the brain was not built for a thousand crises a day,
that peace is not ignorance,
and that attention is not owed to everything simply because it is loud.

---

Wabi-Sabi and the Algorithm

We chase updates like meaning will be in the next refresh. But wabi-sabi reminds us:
Imperfection is not a flaw. Incompleteness is not failure.
And not knowing everything… is okay.

Let the world spin a little without you.
Let your attention return to what is near, what is real, what is yours.

Because the truth is:
You are not the sum of what you consume.
You are what you choose to keep.

---

Put your phone down.
Your life is happening in the next room.