How to live joyfully in a digital age
Sometimes you need someone else to ask the question to discover what’s really true about you.
Not long ago, Nigerian-born Canadian Ony Anukem invited me on her Twenty5 Podcast to ask me what I wish I had known when I was 25 years old. Ony is smart. I intentionally arrived at our recording time unprepared, hoping to let my answers slip out naturally instead of spouting canned responses the way I sometimes think I should. (Got to stay on message. Got to hit the talking points.) As I shared my circuitous career path through public broadcasting, freelancing, communications, publishing, and early parenthood, I heard myself tell her:
“All of the best things that have happened in my career and in my life had nothing to do with me controlling them.”
A wave of shock reverberated through my body as I heard myself say the words. In an instant, I saw how my efforts at control had so persistently let me down and how everything meaningful and good in my life had come by some other means entirely. They all had something to do with openness, a wild trust in my instincts and, I’d go so far as to say, serendipity – meeting the right people at the right moments.
I want more good in my life, more meaning, and more joy. If I can’t control my way to those outcomes, what else can I do?
Technology reinforces the impulse to control.
On an average day, you and I spend more time with our digital products and platforms than we do with any single human being. Because of this, we put ourselves in the way of the three sirens of consumerism: comfort, control, and convenience - the drivers of Big Tech, Big Corporations, Big Everything. Over time, they’ve shaped the way create, work, and think about relationships - even the ways we’re willing to love.
But what is the cost of this constant orientation toward convenience, comfort, and control?
Over time, these systems constrain what we are willing to do.
You know that creating — making anything worthwhile — whether it be a family, a resilient mind, a vocation, a marriage, a vibrant neighbourhood, doesn’t work like that. There’s nothing efficient or comfortable about it.
All of the best things that have happened in my career and my life had nothing to do with me controlling them. Chances are good yours haven’t either.
Here is what I’m getting at, Joy Seeker.
The tech that shapes our lives is at odds with the way humans actually work.
At our core, you and I are after one thing: love. Meaning and belonging. But here’s the thing: love is the opposite of control. Laziness is the opposite of love. The way we experience love is through the inconvenient joys of relationship. Warm relationships are our greatest source of happiness and relationships aren’t easy, they’re effortful.
Control, convenience, and comfort — the promises of our tech-obsessed world — aren’t going to get you where you want to go.
Think about it: the things you are most proud of in life — the child you are raising, the marathon you completed, the community garden you’re starting, the major project you hit out of the park — these required all of you: all of your attention, all of your love, all of your courage, all of the risk. Could you control it? No. Were you all in? Hell, yes you were.
It is in these great effortful pursuits, that we experience not only the outer reaches of our abilities but our limits, requiring us to rely on others — deepening our love of the people and projects that mean the most to us.
They’re good burdens.
The burdensome part of these activities is actually just the task of getting across a threshold of effort. As soon as you have crossed the threshold, the burden disappears.
What are you left with then? You are left with joy.
It’s what you were made for.
