Consider the power of thresholds, phases, and transitions in our life. They create friction, along with resistance and uncertainty. But, equally, they create change and transformation. Think about the cost to us when we reject the difficulty of these experiences and instead prioritize seamlessness and convenience above all. The cost is dear.
A passage from the philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s book The Disappearance of Rituals expresses this well. I quote at length, emphases are his:
Rights of passage, give structure to life in the same way seasons do. Whoever passes a certain threshold has concluded a face of life, and enters into a new one. Thresholds, as transitions, give a rhythm to, articulate, and even narrate space and time. They make possible a deep experience of order. Thresholds are temporally intense transitions. Today, they are being erased and replaced with an accelerated and seamless communication and production. This is making us poor in space and time. In our attempt to produce more space in time we lose them. They lose their language and become mute. Thresholds speak. Thresholds transform. Beyond a threshold, there is what is other, what is foreign. In the absence of the imagination of the threshold, the magic of the threshold, all that is left is the hell of the same. The construction of the global is premised on the ruthless destruction of thresholds and transitions. Information and commodities prefer a world without thresholds: unresisting smoothness accelerates circulation. Today, temporally intense transitions are disintegrating into speedy passages, continuous links, and endless clicks.
Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals, p. 35
All this might be too abstract. But take a moment to think about the role friction plays in your own life. What does good friction look like? Can friction help us crack open kernels of joy? If we take the time to be less seamless and efficient, will we discover meaningfulness where we least expect it?
Experiment:
Complete one action more slowly than usual.
Take a more winding path, one that takes you at least twice as long as usual to get where you’re going.
Let your mind wander instead of keeping it busy.
Schedule that lunch with a friend even though you don’t ‘have the time.’
Handwrite a letter, and then (snail) mail it to a family member or friend - even if you live with them.
Among your possessions, find something old and fix it up rather than replace it - or just enjoy its imperfections.
There’s no one right way to experiment with this. No to-do list. Just choose slower and less perfect and notice how your life is no longer quite the same. Notice what happens next.