I was tired again today, and I knew why. It was funny because I knew what I had to do to not feel like this, I had to rest, like a human was supposed to, but we choose to stare at our phone screens, the rectangular screens of flashing lights, the ones which are the portals to the world. I remember being a kid one day, waking up at 6in the morning to play with my toys. There was a certain sense of definiteness to my day when life and world were smaller and beyond our understanding. But why does it feel like this today?

Why do we hardly pause? Why is today sitting and basking in the feeling of uncomfortable silence and inner voice a “waste of time”? When did we end up in a world where we decided that resting, taking a step back, and acknowledging human limits became the norm? Everything today in our lives is curated to our taste, to our liking. Everything we consume has been so perfect, sure, and self-centred that we have forgotten to remember and feel the tiredness that our souls feel. Why is it that most of us feel restless, and a sense of dissatisfaction with peace? Why have we trained our brains to be active all the freaking time? In a digital world that continues to drown in the digital presence, screen time, and social media, we have lost the art of simply doing nothing. We have lost the art of being bored.

In a world that has everything we can think of at our fingertips in our mobile phones and the internet, maybe it is time for us to take a step back and rest. Take a break. Maybe go touch the grass, as the younger generation calls it. Maybe it's time we address the corner in our hearts that begs for us to stop. The tired bit of our soul, which feels overwhelmed by everything we consume mindlessly all day long.

Our brains were not built to be inundated with data, information, and news all the time. Our minds need time to recover from the bombardment of flashy images to our minds. When it is time for us to un-groove and face our thoughts, you should not run away from them in the pursuit of chasing a high that dulls your thoughts for the moment. Suppressing your emotions does more harm to you than the feelings you feel when you face them right then. It stays there ticking like a time bomb. And that is why sometimes boredom is a tool to reconnect with yourself to truly ask yourself: what you’re truly feeling.

We have all at some points in our lives felt the need to run away from the weight and the burden that comes with unpacking and sitting with our feelings and emotions. But the fact is, despite how much you feel that you will not be able to manage those, you must still stay and face them because they, too, are a part of you and deserve to be heard. In a digital world, it is very easy to distract ourselves with things that take our attention from the tasks at hand. But it is important for us to take our control and attention back in our control. In the digital world, what is up for grabs is our time and feelings. These are the only things which truly remain in our control, because almost everything is either controlled or dictated by things beyond our sphere of influence.

So, resistance and revolt, in this age, are quiet and intentional. It is not about deleting every app or retreating into a cabin in the woods — it’s about reclaiming small moments of stillness from the grip of our devices. It’s about noticing when the hand reaches for the phone without thought and choosing not to. It’s about allowing ourselves to sit in the awkward space between our impulses for something stimulating. It is about understanding that it is okay and merely human

to be simply do-nothing, that your life does not need to be a continuous hustle of struggle. Your life is yours, and it must not be decided or affected by what you think others have to say about it.

In today’s world, we’ve lost the rhythm of slowness, the comfort of waltzing in peace. Even our rest has been turned into a project. Something that needs to be tracked, measured, and optimised. We don’t walk without purpose; we walk to hit step counts. The days of taking a walk outside because the room was too dull are gone, because the room now has Netflix, you could binge-watch at any moment. We don’t read without urgency; we read to post about it; we want to tell everyone what we are reading. Slowness has almost become a luxury in a world that treats speed as a virtue. But it is in slowness that we notice the details. The way the sunlight falls on a table, the way thoughts rearrange themselves in quiet. The way you think about messaging your old friend. The way is an inspiration for a new post. What we can do and must do is take back the spaces that belong to us. Not by rejecting the digital world entirely, but by refusing to let it dictate every corner of our inner lives. We can choose to put the phone away during a meal. We can let ourselves be bored on a bus ride. We can let conversations breathe without glancing at a screen. In a culture that sells our attention to the highest bidder, these acts are not small. They are a reclamation. They are how we remember what it feels like to live, instead of just existing in a constant scroll.

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