”Dad, can I sleep here, please?”
It was Caio, my 9-year-old son, lying on my bed, stalling on his bedtime routine. Brushing his teeth, putting on his braces, going to bed in his own bed. That’s usually what he’s expected of: discipline, responsibility, sleeping at the right time, in the right place.
But I couldn’t resist the invitation. Yes, it seemed like a request, but it was an invitation. An invitation to enjoy that moment. He won’t be 9 years old for much longer. When I blink, he won’t want to sleep on my chest anymore. When I blink again, he won’t even live in my house anymore.
The invitation was to savor that moment, to live it fully. I enjoyed the joy of that unique instant, one that will never return, even if he asks for it again tomorrow.
When you focus your full attention on something so simple and yet so special, that’s when you experience true happiness. I could cite the Harvard study to scientifically reinforce my point that relationships are what make us happy in the long run, but I’m not in the mood today. I prefer the perspective of my own experience.
It’s a great privilege to have a wife and children whom I love so much and who are here with me. But without that clarity, it wouldn’t necessarily make me happy. There are many people surrounded by family who don’t experience that loving relationship and prioritize stress, demands, and the daily rush.
Letting these moments pass is letting go of the only opportunity to be happy. We spend our lives chasing money, neglecting what truly matters, hoping that it will make us happy.
What I was doing when Caio asked to sleep there and lay down on my chest was reading an article that contrasted radically with that feeling. The text, written by Cirtrini Research. It depicts a scenario where AI generates an economic catastrophe through unemployment. It exudes despair and unhappiness.
This gave me a clear perspective on how this insane pursuit of having more (more prosperity, more productivity, more abundance) completely misses the point. The materialization of such a scenario would demonstrate our misfortune in failing to see what truly matters, not only as individuals but as a species.
But meditating in the following days, still imbued with this clarity, another scenario projected itself onto the screen of my mind. What if technology allows us to have everything we need to meet our needs, and thus we can focus on what really matters?
What if we didn’t have to work so much and had more time to look at each other? To hold hands, laugh, tickle, hug, love, and make love?
That might be a very optimistic view. That’s not what’s happening at all. Technology is emptying us, gluing our eyes to screens instead of looking into the eyes of others, polarizing us and sowing hatred instead of bringing us closer and sowing love. AI isn’t making us work less. It’s generating faster iteration cycles, making the world spin faster and exhausting us in the process. Just keeping up with the news is already exhausting and often depressing. Let alone trying to stay technologically up-to-date.
And how can the current reality be transformed into such an optimistic vision? When things are bad, I usually say that at some point we hit rock bottom and bounce back. If we’re falling so fast, we can bounce back high!
I see signs. There’s a generation marked by social media, but the next one is already showing awareness of the damage.
Perhaps we do need to hit rock bottom. To break down as a society, with unprecedented unemployment, with polarization escalating to World War III, and with environmental impact pushing us to the brink of extinction. I don’t wish for any of that. I wish that what could come after all this comes first. That we wake up. Or better yet, that we can sleep, lying on each other’s chests, savoring this moment and seeing happiness in the simplicity of what truly matters.