Life at 1.5x

These days, it feels like we are living life by just two principles: explain everything quickly and get pleasure quickly. There is no clear destination ahead, no purposeful goal. We have boats ready, perfect cars, but no real sense of where we are going. The destination is there, but the essence is not. The feature that lets us listen to messages or videos at 1.5x or 2x or even 3x with YouTube now speed feels perfectly suited to our lives, because our entire existence is already running at 1.5x.

Life has become so fast that we no longer want to pay deep attention to anything. If we slow down, we might start noticing things we are not supposed to notice, the flowers along the road instead of just yellow colored lines passing by. And if we begin to notice deeply, then maybe we would no longer be as useful to systems, nations, markets, power structures or even to this world. If we pause to look at clouds, observe flowers or truly absorb a moment, how would we keep ‘earning' life?

Everything today is designed to be summarized, precised actually. Literature is reduced to themes, characters, summaries and quick takeaways. Thick books are compressed into one page explanations so we can move on immediately. Take Google search as an example, we write something and the first thing you see is the AI summary. We want instant understanding without involvement. There is no patience left to go into depth. Even wisdom is packaged into short, simplistic books that promise transformation without struggle, as if years of effort can be replaced by a single reading.

Great works once demanded time, weight and seriousness. Now we barely want to touch their surface. We want a few quotes, a few ideas and then we feel done. Going in depth feels like a burden. Every pleasure is skimmed, every scene changes before we can truly taste it. Like sitting on a moving train, the scenery keeps changing and we never fully enjoy any single view.

Our minds have become straight, like screens where images constantly shift. One moment it is news, some tragedy, some comedy, then some celebrity gossip. We feel emotions - laughet, cry, fear and smile - at the same time. There is no pause, no space between emotions. Just constant rushing. Sometimes it feels like we are running on a treadmill – moving constantly, yet going nowhere. We are not really alive; we are just surviving.

Wonder has disappeared from our lives. We are no longer astonished. Surprise feels rare. And the biggest goal of this fast-pased life seems to be figuring out how to become rich as quickly as possible. Meaning, waiting, longing and silence feel unbearable. Even the wait, itself, must be fast.

We are moving so quickly that our past and present have merged resulting in constant confusion. The clear sense of words: before, now and late has blurred. Days pass and we cannot think what happened just a few days ago. Our schedules are full of unnecessary tasks and meetings, leaving little to no room for longing or devotion. No one is willing to wait years for love, meaning or truth. No one wants to sit still for a long time, hoping for a message that may change everything.

Our food is now fastfood, our travel is now bullet train, our messages now arrive instantly. Everything reaches us quickly, yet we have no time to truly feel any of it. Like machines, our minds process information rapidly, but feelings require pauses, distance and silence. There used to be a gap between laughter and tears, between hope and fear. That gap has vanished.

Because of this speed, we have accepted living on the surface. We are satisfied with appearances and have lost interest in essence. We glance at a flower and move on. Life feels like an illusion of movement.

Once, time felt something a person could ride, slow down or hold. Now it feels like it controls us completely. We are always busy, yet empty. There was a time when everything could be postponed for love, for longing, for devotion. And now? Nothing can wait.
Speed allows understanding, but feeling requires stillness, and we no longer have that stillness.

Perhaps we need to slow this 1.5x life down, maybe for a while. To sit quietly, to allow time to stretch, to experience moments without rushing past them. To be okay with seeming idle while inwardly being deeply alive. To sit with a single thought, a single feeling, a single idea and let it fill us completely.

In a world that sells everything for small gains, choosing stillness feels rebellious. Sitting quietly, holding a single thought close, feels like reclaiming life itself. That stillness, that not-so-hurried presence, feels like the closest thing to heaven we can experience here.

We are all just caught in this rush, you and I are the same. Still, the hope remains that moments will come when there is nothing but us, our thoughts and weird thoughts, and no treasure or opportunity will feel valuable enough to pull us away from that quiet moment.

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