The Inconvenience of a Convenient Life
About a week ago, my beloved microwave broke. It generated scary sparks inside and I knew that was the end of it. Two great years ended. Convenience ended.
I used my microwave for making my tees and coffees. Two-minutes for a full-cup of water. Ding. Ding. Ding. Water is ready. Pour in coffee. Or tea. That was what I did all day along. Alas, no more.
I don’t keep a kettle so I had to boil the tea water or coffee milk in a small pan. What used to take two minutes in microwave now took ten. How simple (and smiley!) life was with the microwave. Someone was like, “Why don’t you buy a new one?” Well, I did. I bought it from Amazon almost the next day. But I have to wait until its delivery.
In this waiting it all began to come about. Tea or coffee making became my meditation (to quote Matt D’Avella). Turn on the glass, electric stove and pour half a cup of milk into the cup. Put milk back into fridge. Wash hands (it’s that season, if you know what I mean). Pour the milk into the pan and let it come to a boil. Put one teaspoon of coffee into the cup. Pour the boiling milk from high up into the cup. Enjoy your home-made cappuccino.
The process of coffee making became slow. I rediscovered the joy of milky coffee. Until a few days ago, I used to boil water, make coffee, then add in a bit of milk. But my microwave’s departure allowed me to think differently and act differently. I began to fall in love with the process of making my coffee. The ten minutes were a much-needed break from my to-dos-loaded days.
Out of something apparently bad can come out something quite good. I became more aware of the coffee making. It brought presence to my days. I have to be there. I can’t leave the milk on the stove and walk. It boils over and stages a mess. This is presence. There is also more appreciation for a cup of coffee made by spending ten minutes. There’s wait. There’s expectation. There’s a behavior and a reward. In a sense, coffee-making feels like a little journey into the good old times when there was no microwaves.
As I miss using my microwave less and less, I have realized that our tools and gadgets, in kitchen and everywhere else, while they make our life easier, semi or fully automatic, they also make us unaware of the real processes that go behind the scene. High convenience, low consciousness. That is the natural result. As you scroll through your Emails on your phone, your coffee maker drips a coffee into your cup. You end up with more time thanks to these appliances. But less of a feeling.
Soft, comfortable lives make us numb to living. Life has become easier in so many ways and that’s to be grateful for. But this whole going without microwave experience taught me that manual labor in some form (like actually going out to get grocery rather than having them delivered) brings out consciousness. A warm, cozy home in a winter season is a welcoming sight. That’s also what makes you unaware. A fully comfortable, fully automatic life is literally a recipe for a meaningless life.
As Siris and Alexas and their brothers begin to take over more and more of our tasks, we have to use less of our brains, less of our consciousness. Items are delivered to the door. There’s automatic food cookers. Automatic vacuum cleaners. You name it. These perfect, automatic lives are the envy of those who can’t afford it (yet). But what about the down-sides?
Obesity and health issues related to immobile lifestyles are rising. People are ordering food rather than cooking it at home. You lose health, you lose money, your lose awareness. What once used to be a luxury at one time has now become ubiquitous. It’s the norm. You don’t even feel blessed to have the facilities or the resources to do so.
As lives are becoming effortless, things are becoming worthless. People are less conscious of their daily lives. We are busy looking at screens, checking emails, liking random posts on social media, sending lols and simultaneously taking our dog on the walk. Who has gained consciousness? Our computers in some ways. The is the age of digital smartness. We keep smart phones so we get to be dumb. Siri will tell us the weather. Siri will type our blogs. We dictate. The digital assistants obey. Computers gain intelligence.
Don’t get me wrong. In a modern world, we need most of our appliances and gadgets to get through the day at a fast pace. But taking a break once in a while can be a delight. You get to keep these little and big luxuries of life but you must do some manual labor to feel you exist. If machines begin to walk us, feed us, clean us (or for us), talk to us, then haven’t we — in some ways — become machines ourselves?
Convenience is a blessing. Convenience is a curse. Have healthy amounts of it and you are good to go. Too much and you lose any sense of your existence. Living standards are rising so more and more people get to enjoy luxurious lives and that is to be celebrated. At the same time, we can lament the loss of joy we used to get by manually making coffee, brewing tea, vacuum cleaning our living rooms, mowing our lawns and by walking (not driving) to work.
