We live in a time of dizzying change. If you’re alive in 2025, there are two forces acting upon on you from opposing sides at all times:

1. You are experiencing a new season of your life. You just graduated college. You just moved cities. You’re setting down roots or having kids. You’re facing menopause. You’ve just lost someone. Or just decided to retire. Whatever season it is, there are new challenges to face for the first time.

2. The culture is changing beneath you. Like quicksand, there is no solid ground to stand on. Every few years technology upends the default ways of life. Job markets, the news cycle, finding a partner, keeping in touch with loved ones, staying healthy, finding your people, spending your days. Culture is a how people use tools at hand, out of any individual’s control. How you parents did the thing, how you expected to do the thing, or how you were trained to do it just a few years ago may not be relevant now.

The result is a society that’s flying by the seat of its pants. Social media was let loose on us faster than our collective brains could adapt, sanding them down to their most primitive parts. The richest people I know are not immune. As someone on the internet said, the entire planet now wants to be semi-comatose while scrolling through memes. AI will make this 100x worse.

It feels ever harder than ever to stay grounded, to remember that the best things in life are simple and infinitely more valuable than the distractions. Society has become more spiky and unpredictable, from elections to markets to the mental state of your family members. Whereas once we could rely on the church or school for collective sanity, staying grounded is now an individual responsibility. And you don’t know who is where on the spectrum. t’s one huge experiment.

Most people around me unconsciously follow the culture of the day, a societal flattening. Most post ephemeral stories of their days online as a means to stay in touch. Because that’s the culture. Most of modern friendship is an asynchronous exchange of short text messages over years. Because that’s the culture. Our minds are too numb (and dumb) to understand what we’ve lost. It takes serious will and intention to avoid doing the new default thing. You need to be able to see the storm in order to row the other way.

This has lead us to a culture I find unrecognizable and disorienting, especially as a new father. Critiquing culture is easy and I’m doing it here, but I intend to use more of my energy towards building a deliberate life of connection and love despite these forces. This feels increasingly rare. As tech eats the masses, I’ll be building my own garden on the side, starting with my family, and seeking out other like-minded wanderers, as that’s really the only option left.