We live in a flat world

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the podcast.

I wanted to talk about importance—about how we know something is important and how we know something is not important—and how that method of measuring importance has been somewhat impaired in our information superhighway age.

I wanted to talk about letters because that is exactly what I found myself talking to my father and mother about some weeks ago. I was inundated with messages, and I asked them how many messages they had to deal with back in the days before even telephones existed. Back when the primary methods of entertainment and information were radio, and people used to send letters to each other in order to communicate because there was no electronic method of doing so.

My mother said she had a lot of friends who were really, you know, avid letter writers, so she used to get multiple letters every week—like maybe four or five. My father said maybe twice a week, and on really uneventful months, maybe a few—like four or five a month. And it varied, of course, depending on how many people one was in contact with and how much information people wanted to share.

But I got to thinking about the process of letters, how they're composed, how they're sent, how much time they take to reach the person for whom they're intended. And I quickly realized that time plays a huge role in it, doesn't it?

It takes time to live life. It takes time to think about, “Okay, I have lived life for a month, and now these are the things that stand out.” And then it takes time to compose the letter because you're curating your life. You'll mention only the things that you think are important, and you leave out most of it because there is a limited amount of space in the letter. And also because, you know, not everything is worth mentioning.

Then you write the letter; you take time to write the letter in a very proper way because readability matters. And then you send it, and then you wait for the letter to get to the person you have sent it to. That person gets the letter a few days later, by which time, if there was something urgent in it, it is probably already outdated. And if there wasn’t anything urgent in it, then they read the letter and absorb it because it is a valuable thing. It stands out from the mundane reality of their life.

They were doing work, they were living life, they were doing other things, and then the letter comes. They take time out of their life to read that letter, to absorb it, to appreciate it, and to think about the person who sent the letter. Then they preserve the letter because they can. It doesn't take much space, and they preserve the letter so that they may perhaps read it at a later point in time.

In all of this, time played a huge role. Time was the limiting factor. Time and space got in the way of the letter. And almost miraculously, they made the experience important because we measure things—we measure how important something is based on how much time and how much space they occupy.

I mean, in our times, practically 90% of the value of a luxury item is its price. And if a thing does not cost that much, then it must have less value. We measure the value of things in our life using how much they cost.

I got to thinking about our messaging systems, about the systems that we use to contact each other. How easy it is to contact anyone—even with a video call. And as far as text messaging goes, that's even easier and faster. I mean, faster doesn't even come into it. It's instantaneous. And in fact, the thing that gets in the way of getting to a message that has been sent to you and reading it and appreciating it is, again, time—but it is a lack of time.

People can send you whatever they want, whenever they want, and it will get to you instantaneously. Whether or not you are able to get to it, read it, and reply depends on how much time you have. And quite possibly, the reaso