What We Want Has Changed

Everything is going faster, and that's okay. We can do something about the feeling.

Business pushes us towards “faster faster more more.” We know this. But our consumption time, our rest time, our entertainment situation has also opened up much wider, and the world is a lot bigger (and smaller) than it ever has been. You know news from all over the world, if you’re still choosing to watch it (I think of the business of news media to be the enemy, as they profit from your fear).

That’s the challenge, though. You do work where it’s faster/faster/more/more, and then when work is done, you consume big/scary/much/much media to try and sooth.

And it’s not really working, that attempt at soothing, is it?

It’s Easy to Feel Massive Angst and Discomfort

You can look back on accounts and journals from 2000 years ago, and hear people talking about how everything is going so much faster than before. It has always been true. What has absolutely and undeniably changed, though, is that you and I are exposed to the entire planet’s news cycles, good and bad, and at least with news, they show the bad (“If it bleeds, it leads.”)

We all carry around a rectangle of glass and metal in our pockets that delivers work information, family stresses, news, and entertainment to us at all times. We don’t click these open to learn about composting (except you, Shel). We seek out dopamine. Little hits of entertainment. It’s a chemical that sooths, and not necessarily a bad chemical. The thing is, we crave it. And the more that ucky things flood our lives, the more we really really really want to feel a moment of peace and feel soothed.

Build That Place. Join That Place

For decades, I’ve had just one business goal: help people use technology to drive better human interaction. I’m going to add a second goal to my “outside of work” work, and that’s this: to encourage a coming together of people who enrich and uplift each other and share experiences.

When I’m not trying to help people thrive at their jobs, I’m going to dedicate my efforts to help people feel seen and understood, cared about, and encouraged, because I believe that’s a huge chunk of what all of us feel is missing lately.

You’ll see a change here. This letter will continue to do what I’ve done for my whole professional life and blend business and life. Only, the life part is now far more focused and intentional around the goal I just laid out.

I aim to encourage a coming together of people who enrich and uplift each other and share experiences.

Monchu. It Means “One Family.”

A while back, I saw a documentary called Happy, and in it, there was a part where they went to this little part of Okinawa that had the highest concentration of 100 year old people in the world. The group was comprised largely of women, and what was discovered was that everyone’s best guess as to why this women all lived well past 100 boiled down to one detail: everyone looked after everyone else.

They considered each other monchu, a word that means more “family by choice,” or so I’ve come to understand. It’s an Okinawan word, or maybe even slang? Because my Japanese friends had no idea what I was saying when I said it to them. But from the moment I heard it, I knew it fit my sense of how I wanted to serve people.

Looking out for each other, uplifting each other, just hearing and seeing each other, seems like such a simple detail, but it kept all these women alive, thriving, and happier than they might have been otherwise. Maybe the concept could do the same for us.

You’ll see me address this concept more here, in a new show I’m going to start on YouTube (just what I needed - another show), and I will talk heavily about it in my other newsletter, Off Screen Life.

You’re already part of it. I think of you who give me your time as part of my monchu. And I’m lucky for that.

So, here we are.

Chris…

MY OTHER PROJECTS

Photography as Meditation

Off Screen Life

Building Agents (my AI startup)

Executive leadership coaching - email me: chris@chrisbrogan.com