What We Can Learn From Quiet Elderly Couples

It is far easier to be productive when you are connected to the Internet. It’s almost too obvious to even say.

And even if you are purposely going without a connection (to focus on an important task, perhaps), you’re likely backing up to a cloud.

In other words: it can be really annoying to lose your Internet connection or be somewhere without it. It is a major impediment to progress.

Last week, I observed this firsthand when my commuter train’s engine died, and they shut off power to conserve energy. No electricity, no Internet, and the delay was going to be upwards of an hour.

I panicked. I was writing on my laptop and needed the Internet for research. My Kindle and phone — normally my go-to back-ups — were both <10% battery.

D’oh!

I looked around at the community of strangers brought together by shared annoyance. Everyone was either complaining to each other or to their phones (I couldn’t see what they were typing but angry-texting is almost as obvious as angry-talking.)

Along with the updates from the conductor, other oft-heard phrases included:

I hate the commuter rail! It always does this!

and

I have no idea what I pay taxes for!

and

Will there be refunds?

I returned a few frowns, sighs, and shoulder shrugs with those closest to me. I joined the crew. What else was there to do?

Everyone was doing it…

…except for the elderly couple, sitting at the other end of the train, perfectly content just looking outside at the trees and occasionally talking.

I suspect (but don’t know) that they do not have cell phones, laptops, or tablets.

And I also suspect that they expect far less of technology than we do.

That couple probably did not understand when the man sitting behind them yelled “it’s a miracle!” when the train started moving again ten minutes later.

The miracle isn’t that the train was fixed — the miracle is that the train works in the first place.

I remembered the pencils and sketch paper in my bag. It was the perfect time for a brainstorm and a cursory outline for a blog post.

This one.

‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless, it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’ — Louis CK

This was primarily sourced from How to be a Long Term Person in a Short Term World, available on Amazon, and blog posts from mjmottajr.com. Follow me on Twitter and on Medium.

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