I was doing some doom-scrolling today, nowadays almost as common and regular as using the bathroom, and I luckily came across a reading of Mary Schmich’s “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young.” In the first few lines, she encourages anyone over the age of 26 to try to write their own graduation speech to the class of this year. This article is her attempt. I encourage you to go read that, then come back and follow my train of thinking.

Not yet 26 but never one to turn down a challenge, I sat for just a minute to consider my graduation speech. And in an ugly feedback loop, I had the urge to pick up my phone to search for some inspiration. I found the original inspiration online (Ms. Schmich’s essay) and I was about to turn to the same device for more. The author probably just sat and thought. Reflected. And produced her essay. She didn’t doom-scroll and suddenly come up with it.

Consumption does not beget creation. You might want to argue and say what about Taylor Swift writing “Death By A Thousand Cuts” after watching Someone Great on Netflix? Or the screenwriter of “Someone Great” writing the script after listening to Taylor Swift’s “Clean?” (True story!) Consumption begets creation… with the addition of one pivotal addition: reflection.

Consumption with reflection begets creation.

And I think of reflection here as a reaction followed by thinking. And I think folks more often than not react without the proper follow-through of thought. Watch a political Tik Tok, get angry, keep swiping. Watch an educational Reel, integrate it, keep swiping. See a workout online, save it, keep swiping. We are becoming bottomless consumers and the remedy is not to stop consuming but to start thinking. If we become critical thinking-less bots, then we are cooked.

I reflected on how Ms. Schmich could have come up with such inspiring words, and I almost got jealous that she didn’t have social media or societal pressures to keep up with peers and post our own lives. She had the privilege to be bored. To think. We fill our lives with meaningless busyness and wonder where the time went.

To be able to think is a skill, and to have time to think is a privilege. As soon as we forget that and become screen addicts, we lose a special piece of what it means to be human. The consumption to creation pipeline is what AI does – and it’s often wrong. We have a special ability to reflect. To react. To think. Don’t become AI with flesh. Squeeze every bit out of this human life that you can.

xoxo,

kc

featured image cred: Chat GPT