I realized last week that I have not had a real conversation with my neighbor in four months and we live maybe fifteen feet apart and I see his car come and go every morning and evening and I wave when I see him taking out the trash and that wave has quietly become the entirety of our relationship. I know what my algorithms recommend for dinner and I know what my calendar looks like for the next three weeks and I know exactly how much money I need to bring in to feel like I am keeping up but I do not know if my neighbor is okay or if he has someone to talk to or if he needs help with something heavy because I am too busy and he is too busy and being busy has become the thing we signal to each other instead of actually knowing each other, and I wonder if all this busyness is a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing we fell into without deciding. We have built this life where every hour is accounted for and every interaction is optimized and every desire is anticipated by systems we barely understand and we call it progress and maybe it is progress toward something but I am not sure it is progress toward a life that feels like a life worth living.

The strange part is that we are busier than ever and we are also doing less than ever because most of what fills our time is not action but reaction to the things the algorithms push in front of us and we scroll and we click and we buy and we feel like we are moving when we are actually just being moved along a path that someone else designed. Nobody goes anywhere anymore to do anything that is not tied to money because everything has a price and a transaction and an optimized funnel and the idea of doing something for someone just because they live next to you feels almost embarrassing like it is inefficient or naive or old-fashioned and I catch myself thinking I should check in on him and then I remember I have a meeting and I tell myself I will do it tomorrow and tomorrow comes and goes and the wave remains the relationship and I wonder if he is telling himself the same thing about me. The little things that used to hold a neighborhood together, the borrowing of sugar and the watching of each other’s houses and the sitting on porches and talking about nothing in particular, all of that has been replaced by transactions and notifications and the quiet hum of a life lived through a screen and I do not think any of us chose this and I think we just failed to notice it happening because it happened slowly and each small loss seemed too small to mourn.

I do not think the answer is to quit my job or throw away my phone and I think the answer is probably smaller than that and the answer is probably just to walk over and knock on his door and ask him how he is doing and actually wait for the answer. The systems that fill our time and shape our wants are not going to make room for the things that matter and that room has to be made by us and it has to be made deliberately because the default state of modern life is to be busy and alone and that default state feels like a bug but it might be a feature of the way we have arranged everything around money and efficiency and the optimization of attention. I still have the wave and maybe that is a start and maybe the start is enough as long as I actually take the next step.

Tell me about the neighbor you have not talked to in too long. I am @troysk704.