Are we that stupid?

Recently, I was at De Roos near Vondelpark in Amsterdam. I was moving out of from Amsterdam that week, so I decided to treat myself to a day of cycling through the city, drinking cappuccinos, and writing. Days like these often come with spontaneous encounters.

This time was no different. While ordering my cappuccino, I met an older woman who mentioned that she liked the place better before, when it wasn’t so trendy yet. We started talking, and she invited me to sit at her table. We spoke about Amsterdam, where she lived, where I lived, where she came from, where I came from… you know how those conversations go. A normal human conversation.

She told me she was originally from Germany, had owned a translation agency, and had once moved to Amsterdam for love. I’ve always had a soft spot for romantic gestures and stories like that.

All in all, it was such a pleasant and spontaneous interaction. And yet, moments like these seem to become rarer and rarer.

You see, if I had been on my phone while waiting, headphones in, this moment probably would never have unfolded the way it did. I would have missed the quiet joy of a spontaneous human interaction. Maybe that’s not a tragedy in itself, but isn’t it almost sinful that these tiny shimmering moments are slowly disappearing from our lives because of those damned screens?

It’s a popular topic nowadays. People are deleting social media, buying flip phones, returning to analog activities and devices, and “touching grass” became an actual trend for weeks. Collectively, we seem to long for something we didn’t realize was so precious: real life.

Strange, isn’t it? How can such an intelligent species slowly become so disconnected? We live in an artificial reality built on hollow validation and endless ego-stroking. Your 10k steps a day goal you keep seeing on your For You page will become boring if you don’t get to do the walk of life together with the ones you love. Your melatonin sleeping pills are pointless if you scroll every night. You can take a cold shower everyday, but if you never hug someone, how do you regulate your nervous system? You can track and optimize your sleep with an app, but do you want to sleep alone the rest of your life?

Think about it for a second…

And yet, there is hope. Deep down, I think we all feel that this isn’t normal. Slowly, we seem to be waking up from the illusion that constant waves of fast dopamine and seeing hundreds of curated perfect lives every day is somehow enjoyable. You and I both know we’ve fallen victim to this fake reality more often than we’d like to admit.

Maybe that’s what we’re truly losing in this digital age: not our attention spans, but our openness to life itself.

To unexpected conversations.
To boredom.
To coincidence.
To the small moments that don’t seem to lead anywhere, yet quietly change your day, or sometimes even your life.

Because how often are we truly present somewhere without mentally being somewhere else at the same time?

Maybe the real question is not how much time we spend on our phones, but how many moments of real life we never get to experience because of them.

So talk to strangers a little more often. Look around. Let yourself be bored for a while and see what comes out of it. I believe you’re full of magic, no perfect timing or picture needed.

It’s still in us. It’s who we are and meant to be.

With love,
Nina