journal seventeen.

Isn’t it gratifying? To hear the words they say? The praises they sing?

Who are you trying to kid? We all know.

You care what they think.

But how could you not. Children, we were born this way, fingers scrolling on digital screens. We don’t touch grass anymore. We watch it, behind a sheet. We have trapped ourself in a box. When did the world become confined to a six by three inch piece of glass and metal, which shatters more easily and often than the bones that used to swing between monkey bars?

No wonder we have become so fragile.

The world has been made that way.

We have made the world that way.

We are smarter than before. We can move faster than ever before. We can communicate faster than we ever have before. We can think at near light speed.

Yet, somehow, we have lost all power of thinking for ourselves.

We regurgitate information we have yet to validate to feel validated. We have to stay current. And the current changes like your mood swings when you see “liked by”s pinging in compared to those phantom notifications you unconsciously reach out and turn your phone on for but realize you do not have. That has become your one source of jubilation.

Not the feeling of sun on skin. Of the warm touch of a friend. Those ancient memories of the whistle in your ear as you side swipe the dodgeball you missed at recess by the fraction of your hair pin.

No.

Now we save the people we want to be. Send videos of the places we want to see to friends who we know will also save it in wonder. Message plans we have for the future to each other that will get backlogged in the sea of our private and group messages while we all stay inside wishing for a better life, like the ones we see in those videos—we will save those too, for inspiration. Be surprised when we feel the stress of not feeling like enough. Not doing enough. Doom scroll further, for longer, in order to feel some sense of satisfaction.

We have crafted humankind’s demise on the public acceptance of envy for one another’s lives, so it feels good when we think we fit in. Yes, it feels gratifying to hear the words they say, the praises they sing, the comments they leave and likes they give. How could it not? When hugs are hard to come by and we’ve forgotten the faces of those we love in exchange for streaks we baby and watch increment day by day, all coded by one of us.