The Life I Might Have Lived If I Had Never Attended an HBCU

I sometimes wonder what my life would look like if I had never attended an HBCU.

Not because I think attending an HBCU magically made me who I am. It didn't.

But I do believe it changed the direction I was headed.

And the funny thing is, I almost didn't go.

From kindergarten through high school graduation, I attended predominantly white schools. I grew up in a Black neighborhood, but most of the Black kids in my neighborhood went to the same schools I did. So while I was surrounded by Black people at home, my educational experience was predominantly white and it was the same for the kids in my neighborhood.

That was simply my normal.

When it came time for college, my plan was to attend a predominantly white institution.

It made sense. It was what I knew.

Then reality showed up with a financial aid package. The PWI offered me a partial academic scholarship. An HBCU offered me a full academic scholarship.

Now, I'm many things, but stupid isn't one of them. I went where the money was.

And that decision changed my life.

I Thought I Knew What It Meant To Be Black

I had already started becoming more conscious of my Black identity during my teenage years. My father played a major role in that. So did music.

Public Enemy. Boogie Down Productions. Artists who weren't exactly making songs designed to keep everybody comfortable at the dinner table. They were giving me information, perspectives and questions that weren't necessarily being handed to me in school.

I was beginning to understand that being Black in America wasn't simply about the color of my skin.

There was history behind it that wasn't being taught. There was culture behind it that I didn't always see. There were experiences behind it that I never really had.

There were things my parents understood because they had lived them that I hadn't yet experienced myself. I was beginning the journey.

But the HBCU solidified it.

Same Skin. Different Experiences.

One of the most eye-opening things about attending an HBCU wasn't simply being surrounded by Black people. I had been surrounded by Black people my entire life in my neighborhood. It was realizing that we hadn't all experienced America the same way.

I would meet somebody and we'd start talking about where we grew up, what school was like, how teachers treated them, what their neighborhoods were like, what their parents taught them, and what they thought about race.

And sometimes I'd think: Wow. We are both Black, but we came through two completely different worlds.

I had been educated in predominantly white schools. Some of my HBCU classmates had spent their entire educational careers surrounded primarily by Black teachers and Black students.

Their reference points were different. Their experiences were different. Their understanding of certain racial dynamics was different.

And instead of making me think one group was right and the other was wrong, it made me realize something much more important: Context matters.

I Learned To Pay Attention

Before college, I knew how to interact with people. The diversity of my upbringing gave me that. But the HBCU taught me to pay attention to something else: how people were interacting with me.

I started noticing the difference between being accepted and being tolerated. Those two things can look remarkably similar if you aren't careful.

That didn't mean every uncomfortable interaction was racism. It didn't mean every white person secretly disliked Black people. And it certainly didn't mean every Black person automatically had my best interests at heart.

It meant I became more observant.

The HBCU taught me to look beyond the surface of an interaction and consider the circumstances surrounding it.

• Look at the history.
• Look at the behavior.
• Look at the pattern.
• Look at the context.
• Then make your judgment.

That was discernment.

My HBCU Didn't Teach Me To Hate White People

This is where I think the conversation about HBCUs sometimes gets unnecessarily stupid. There are people who hear "HBCU" and immediately assume that students are being taught some kind of anti-white ideology. 

That wasn't my experience at all. My HBCU didn't teach me to hate white people. It taught me to love Black people.

There's a difference. A pretty important one.

Loving your own people doesn't require hating somebody else's. Understanding Black history doesn't require rewriting everybody else's history.

Being proud of Black accomplishments doesn't require pretending other people haven't accomplished anything.

And learning about racism doesn't mean believing every white person is racist. That's kindergarten-level thinking.

My HBCU gave me something I hadn't fully received before: A concentrated education in Black history, culture and experience.

Not because Black history is the only history that matters. But because it was the history I had the least opportunity to learn about in the educational environments I came through.

What I Didn't Know I Didn't Know

That's probably the biggest gift the HBCU gave me. It showed me how much I didn't know. Not just about Black history. About myself.

Growing up in a predominantly white school system, I became accustomed to an environment that didn't always center my culture or my history. I didn't necessarily recognize what was missing because I didn't know what I was missing.

The HBCU started filling in some of those blanks.

I encountered stories, perspectives and pieces of Black history that weren't part of the education I had received growing up.

And suddenly, some things I had heard from my father while growing up made more sense.

Some of the music I'd been listening to made more sense.

Some of the things I had observed but couldn't quite articulate finally had context.

It was like somebody handed me several missing pages from a book I'd been reading my entire life.

What If I Had Gone To The PWI?

This is the question I keep coming back to :What if I had received that partial scholarship and gone to the PWI?

I probably would have done fine. That's the strange part. 

I already knew that environment. I probably would have graduated, gotten a job, built relationships and continued living my life.

Maybe I would have eventually discovered more about Black history.

Maybe I would have become more conscious of racial dynamics through work, relationships, travel, books, music or simply getting older.

Maybe.

But I don't know.

What I do know is that I wouldn't have had the exact experience that changed me.

I wouldn't have sat across from people whose Black experiences were completely different from mine and had those conversations.

I wouldn't have heard their stories.

I wouldn't have had those moments where I realized that two people could share the same skin color while having completely different understandings of what that skin color meant in America.

And I wouldn't have had the same environment in which to explore my own identity.

That's the part people sometimes miss about education.

Education isn't only about what somebody puts on a chalkboard.

Sometimes it's about who you meet.

Sometimes it's about the conversations you have in a dorm room at 2 AM.

Sometimes it's about realizing that something you thought was universal was actually just your personal experience.

Sometimes the most important lesson isn't: "Here's the answer."

It's: "You need to ask a better question."

The HBCU Expanded My World

My HBCU didn't shrink my world. It expanded it. I went into college with a broad understanding of how to interact with people from different backgrounds. I came out with a much deeper understanding of my own.

That may sound like a small distinction. It wasn't. It gave me another lens.

It taught me that Black history isn't simply a collection of dates, famous names and February school projects.

• It is connected to American history.
• It is connected to economics.
• It's connected to education.
• It's connected to neighborhoods.
• It's connected to music.
• It's connected to politics.
• It's connected to family.
• It's connected to how people see themselves and how other people see them.

And sometimes, understanding those connections changes the way you interpret things happening right in front of you.

That doesn't mean automatically blaming racism for every negative experience.

It means not automatically dismissing it either.

Again: Context.

I Didn't Leave With Hatred. I Left With Perspective.

That's probably the simplest way I can explain what the HBCU did for me.

It didn't teach me to hate. It taught me to understand.

It didn't make me suspicious of everyone who wasn't Black. It made me more conscious of the world around me.

It didn't teach me that Black people are better than white people. It taught me that Black people have a history worth knowing, a culture worth understanding and accomplishments worth celebrating.

Most importantly, it gave me a stronger sense of identity.

I had spent the first 17 years of my life learning in an environment where Blackness wasn't necessarily the center of the educational experience.

My HBCU gave me the opportunity to make it part of the center of mine. That's a lesson I might have eventually learned somewhere else.

But I don't know.

And that's why I sometimes wonder about that other version of my life.

The version where the PWI gave me the full scholarship.

The version where I never stepped onto an HBCU campus.

The version where I never met all those people who came from experiences completely different from mine.

Maybe I would have turned out exactly the same.

I seriously doubt it.

Because sometimes the most important decisions we make aren't the ones we carefully plan.

Sometimes they're the decisions made because one school offered you a partial scholarship and another school offered you a full ride.

Sometimes the universe has a strange sense of humor. And sometimes, apparently, financial aid is destiny.

One thing I know for sure though... I did four years of school without needing a student loan. 

Won't He do it?

Youth Is Wasted on Young People

“Youth is wasted on the young.”

When I was younger, I thought that saying was just something old people said because old people apparently enjoyed reminding everybody that they used to be young too.

Now I'm almost 55 and I get it. I really, really get it.

Because there is something about getting older that changes the way you look at your younger years. You start realizing that the things you thought were unlimited actually had expiration dates.

Energy, time, physical ability, and, perhaps most importantly, opportunity. When you're young, you don't realize how valuable that is because you have so much of it.

You Think Your Body Will Always Work Like That

One of the biggest things you don't appreciate when you're young is your physical body. When you're 20, you can stay up all night and go to work the next morning. You can eat a super-sized combo at 2 AM and somehow wake up fine. You can play basketball, football, or run around with your friends and your biggest concern is if you can get in enough games before the sun goes down.

Then you get older and suddenly your body starts sending you customer-service emails.

You sleep wrong and your neck hurts. You sit too long and your back hurts. You bend over to pick something up and have to negotiate with your knees before standing back up. You can injure yourself simply by existing.

Nobody really tells young people that your body is an asset. At least they didn't when I was growing up. And you don't appreciate an asset until it starts depreciating.

That's why taking care of yourself when you're young matters. Exercise. Eat better. Get enough sleep (can't stress that enough).

Don't treat your body like it's a rental car.

Then There's Money

The financial part might be even more important. When you're young, retirement sounds like something that happens to people who are 138 years old. You get your first real paycheck and your brain immediately starts calculating what you can buy.

New car. New clothes. New gadgets. Trips. Restaurants. Entertainment. Whatever makes life more enjoyable right now.

And there's nothing wrong with enjoying your money.

The problem is failing to understand that your money could be working while you're living your life. That's the part I wish more young people understood. That's the part that I wish that I understood sooner than 30 years old. 

If you're 25, you don't necessarily need to make a fortune. You just need to understand time.

Because $10,000 invested at 25 and left alone for decades has an entirely different opportunity to grow than $10,000 invested at 50.

That's the magic of compound growth. You aren't just making money on your original money. Eventually, you're making money on the money your money already made. 

Young People Think They Have Time

That's a whole trap.

• I'll do it later.
• I'll start saving later.
• I'll invest later.
• I'll exercise later.
• I'll travel later.
• I'll spend more time with my family later.
• I'll start that business later.
• I'll pursue that dream later.

"Later" is one of the most expensive words in the English language. Because eventually, later becomes now.

And then you look around and realize that 20 years disappeared. Not 20 days. Not 20 months. Twenty years.

Where did they go? That's the part nobody can adequately explain when you're young. You think you're moving through life one day at a time when you're actually moving through it one year at a time.

And those years don't ask permission before leaving.

The Advantage Young People Have Isn't Money

This is what I want people in their 20s to know: Your biggest advantage isn't your salary. It's time.

You may not have much money yet. That's understandable because you're starting out. But you have something incredibly valuable that somebody approaching 55 can't buy. You have decades!

• You can make mistakes and recover.
• You can change careers.
• You can start investing.
• You can start exercising.
• You can learn another skill.
• You can start a business.
• You can travel.
• You can build relationships.
• You can fail.

And then try again.

Older people don't necessarily have more wisdom because we're just smarter. Sometimes we have wisdom because we've had more opportunities to screw things up and learn from them.

Youth Is Wasted Because Young People Don't Know What They Have.

That's really what the saying means. Young people aren't stupid. They simply don't have the perspective that comes with time.

When you're 20, 55 seems ancient.

When you're 55, 20 doesn't seem that long ago.

That's the strange trick life plays on you.

You spend the first half of your life trying desperately to become an adult. Then you spend the second half wondering where your youth went.

Nobody wins.

Well, Father Time does. He's undefeated.

If I Could Give My Younger Self One Piece of Advice

I wouldn't tell my younger self to stop having fun. I'd actually tell him to have more fun.

But I'd tell him to understand the value of the future while enjoying the present.

Put money away. Invest. Take care of your body. Don't waste years trying to impress people who won't matter 20 years later. Spend time with people you love. Learn something. Take some risks. 

Don't assume you have forever. Because you don't. None of us do.

And that's not meant to be depressing. It's meant to be liberating.

The Real Problem Isn't Being Young

The real problem is being young and believing you'll always be young. That's the mistake.

At 25, you think 55 is far away.

At 35, you think you've still got plenty of time.

At 45, you suddenly start doing math you probably should have started doing 20 years earlier.

Then one day you're standing there thinking: “How did I get here so fast?”

That's when the saying finally makes sense.

Youth really is wasted on the young.

Not because young people don't deserve it. It's because young people haven't lived long enough to understand just how valuable youth actually is.

Gen Alpha Doesn't Hate Reading. We Stopped Teaching Them to Love It.

There was a time when telling a child to go read a book wasn't considered punishment.

It wasn't unusual for a kid to have a favorite book. Maybe a favorite author. Even a library card. 

You could give a child a book and expect them to disappear into it for an afternoon. 

Now?

Give some kids a book and you might as well hand them a rotary phone.

We love to blame Gen Alpha for having short attention spans, being glued to screens, lacking curiosity, or struggling to concentrate.

But here's the uncomfortable part:

Children didn't create the environment they're growing up in. Adults did.

Gen Alpha is being raised in a world where reading has gradually been pushed out of the home, replaced by phones, tablets, YouTube, video games, streaming services and an endless supply of content designed to require as little patience as possible.

Then we send those same children to school and wonder why they don't enjoy reading.

Seriously?

What did we think was going to happen?

Reading Starts at Home

Schools can teach children how to read. But schools can't be expected to single-handedly teach children to love reading. That starts at home. Children learn what matters by watching what the adults around them value.

If Mom and Dad spend their evenings scrolling through Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, while the television runs in the background, what exactly is the child supposed to conclude about books?

If nobody in the house reads, why would a child assume reading is important?

We tell children, "You need to read more."

But children are watching us. And children are excellent at noticing hypocrisy.

A parent who tells a child to put down the phone while spending four hours on their own phone is not teaching discipline. They're teaching that discipline is something adults demand from children but don't necessarily practice themselves.

We Used to Make Reading a Thing

Reading used to be built into childhood.

You went to the library.

You had book reports.

Books were birthday/Christmas presents.

And somewhere along the way, we confused reading proficiency with reading enjoyment.

A child can know how to pronounce every word on a page and still have absolutely no relationship with books. That's a problem. Because reading isn't just about vocabulary. Reading teaches you how to think. 

A Child Who Doesn't Read Has Fewer Places to Go

Books force children to do something modern technology rarely asks them to do. A book doesn't constantly interrupt itself. There isn't another book waiting every 30 seconds like a TikTok video. There isn't an algorithm screaming, "Here's something else!"

A book makes you stay in one spot to imagine, visualize, question, connect one idea to another, and sometimes, it makes you uncomfortable.

That's part of the point.

When children read stories, they encounter people who don't look like them, think like them, live like them or believe what they believe.

They learn empathy without somebody standing in front of them giving a lecture on empathy.

They learn cause and effect, consequences, that people can be complicated, that there can be more than one perspective (super-important).

And eventually, they begin developing something incredibly important: their own thoughts.

That's the Part We Should Be Worried About

A child who doesn't learn how to think independently becomes dependent on everyone else to tell them what to think. And we're already living in a world where that's becoming increasingly dangerous.

Algorithms decide what people see.

Social media decides what's popular.

Influencers decide what's fashionable.

Comment sections decide who's right.

Political parties decide who's angry.

And artificial intelligence can now produce an answer before a person has even finished forming the question.

Convenience is wonderful but convenience can also make people intellectually lazy.

If a child never develops the habit comparing sources or how to sit quietly with a complicated idea, how are they supposed to navigate adulthood?

"But My Child Doesn't Like Reading."

Maybe they don't. But that doesn't mean they can't. Children don't automatically hate reading.

Sometimes they hate reading what the parent or teacher wants them to read. There's a difference.

Find the right genre and stop worrying so much about whether they're reading the "right" book and start worrying about whether they're reading anything at all.

Parents Have to Stop Outsourcing Everything to Schools

This is where adults need to take some responsibility (translation: I'm about to step on some toes).

Teachers matter. But parents matter too.

We can't hand a child an iPad at age three, give them unlimited access to YouTube at five, let algorithms raise their interests at eight, and then blame the school at twelve because they don't want to read a novel.

That's not how this works.

Education doesn't begin when the school bell rings. Education begins at home.

And No, This Isn't an Attack on Technology

Technology isn't the enemy. A child can love video games and love books. I'm an example of that myself. A child can watch YouTube and read. A child can use AI and still learn how to think.

The problem is balance.

Technology gives children an unprecedented amount of information. Reading teaches them what to do with information.

Those aren't the same thing.

A child can consume 500 pieces of content in a day and still not understand a single complicated idea or tell you what half of it even was. More information doesn't automatically create more intelligence. Sometimes it just creates more noise.

We Need to Bring Back the Boredom

Here's another uncomfortable truth: Children need time when nothing is happening.

No phone. No television. No video game. Nothing.

Because boredom gives the brain somewhere to go. That's when imagination shows up. That's when curiosity shows up. That's when a child might pick up a book because there's nothing else competing for their attention.

We have become so terrified of our children being bored that we've eliminated one of the conditions that helps children become curious. Every quiet moment gets filled.

And then we wonder why they can't concentrate.

Reading Is Bigger Than Reading

Let me wrap this up because I'm beating a dead horse. And a bunch of you probably stopped reading 30 seconds ago because this post is longer than a TikTok video. 

This isn't really about books. It's about raising people who can think. People who can sit with an idea without immediately needing somebody else to validate it. People who can understand another person's perspective. People who can change their minds when presented with better information.

That's what reading can help develop.

And those skills aren't optional anymore. They're survival skills.

Because Gen Alpha is growing up in an information environment unlike anything previous generations experienced.

They will have access to more information than any generation in history.

Eventually, childhood ends. Parents can't follow their children everywhere. Teachers can't follow them into adulthood. And nobody can protect them from every bad idea they're going to encounter.

Eventually, they're going to have to make decisions for themselves.

And when that day comes, we better hope we raised children who know how to think.

Not just children who know how to scroll.

Because the world doesn't need another generation that can consume information at lightning speed.

It needs a generation capable of stopping long enough to ask whether the information they're consuming is actually true.

That starts with curiosity. It grows through reading. And it becomes wisdom when a child learns to think for themselves.

So maybe the question isn't: "Why don't kids read anymore?"

Maybe the question is: "What have we done to make reading less important to them?"

Is Originality Dead, or Did the Algorithm Just Make Us All the Same?

There was a time when you could tell where somebody was from just by listening to them talk.

Not because they announced their hometown. You could hear it.

People from different regions had different accents, different slang, different expressions, and different ways of saying the same thing. Somebody from New York didn't necessarily sound like somebody from Memphis. Somebody from Chicago didn't necessarily sound like somebody from Atlanta. The way people spoke was shaped by where they lived, who raised them, who they grew up around, and the culture that surrounded them.

Then came social media.

And apparently, the entire country decided we needed to sound like the same 14 people on TikTok.

Now somebody can live in Mississippi, spend six hours scrolling through Instagram, and wake up the next morning talking like an influencer from Los Angeles.

"Girl, I literally cannot."

You could literally. You just did.

And it's not just the way we talk.

• It's the way we dress.
• The way we pose.
• The way we decorate our houses.
• The restaurants we photograph.
• The vacations we take.
• The phrases we use.
• The coffee orders.

Even the way we announce that we're having a good time has become strangely standardized.

Social media has created something we've never really had before: billions of people being exposed to the exact same cultural references at almost exactly the same time.

And we're surprised that we're starting to look alike.

Think about the vacation pictures.

How many times have you seen the same photo of a woman reclined on a transparent surfboard in crystal-clear waters as a drone captures the photo from above?

She's usually wearing the same general type of swimsuit, striking the same general pose, in the same general kind of tropical location.

And somewhere in the caption is something about "living my best life."

I'm not saying she shouldn't do it.

If chilling on a clear surfboard in the middle of the ocean makes you happy, please relax on that thing until the battery in the drone dies.

The question isn't whether people should enjoy popular things.

The question is: How many identical pictures do we need before we start asking ourselves whether we're actually creating memories or simply reproducing someone else's?

Because there's a difference between inspiration and imitation. We see something we like, so we try it.

That's normal.

Society have always borrowed from one another. Fashion, music, language, art, food, hairstyles and traditions have always traveled from one community to another.

But social media has industrialized imitation. The algorithm doesn't necessarily reward originality. It rewards familiarity.

If a particular video works, people make another version. If that version works, thousands make their version.

Then everybody is doing the same dance, using the same sound, making the same facial expression and pointing at the same words appearing on the screen.

Eventually, something that was once creative becomes a template. And the template becomes a trend. And the trend becomes something everybody does. Then we move on to the next thing.

We're living in an era where people have more opportunities to express themselves than any generation in history, yet somehow we're increasingly expressing ourselves in remarkably similar ways.

That's the irony.

We have more individuality available to us while simultaneously becoming more culturally synchronized.

And maybe that's because we're no longer just consuming culture. We're constantly being shown what we're supposed to consume.

Before social media, you might have known what was popular among the people around you. Now you can see what's popular among millions of strangers before you've even brushed your teeth.

And when you see something enough times, it starts feeling normal.

Then desirable.

Then necessary.

That's how influence works.

You don't necessarily have to be told what to think. Sometimes you just have to be given the same thing repeatedly until you stop questioning why you want it. Why do you think some songs become "hits" although most people you know can't stand it? 

This doesn't mean originality is dead. I don't think it is. But I do think originality has gotten harder.

Not because people have become less creative, but because we're surrounded by so much other people's creativity that it's difficult to hear our own ideas.

Before social media, you had to come up with something on your own. Now you can simply open your phone and find 10,000 people who already came up with something. And there's nothing wrong with borrowing an idea. The problem starts when you stop asking yourself whether you actually like the idea.

Are you wearing that because you like it? Or because everybody you follow is wearing it?

Are you taking that vacation picture because it's beautiful? Or because you've seen it 47 times and decided that's what a vacation is supposed to look like?

Are you doing something because you want to? Or because you've been trained by an algorithm to want it?

That's the part worth thinking about.

Because maybe the real threat isn't that social media is making everybody the same. Maybe it's that we're becoming so accustomed to being influenced that we've forgotten how to make decisions without influence.

There used to be a lot more room for people to simply be themselves. Somebody could be strange without immediately discovering that 2.7 million other people were also being strange in exactly the same way.

And maybe that's what we're missing. Individuality.

The freedom to do something because you like it. To wear something nobody on your timeline is wearing. To take a vacation picture that doesn't look like everybody else's vacation picture. To say something in your own voice. To have an opinion that didn't arrive prepackaged by a podcast, influencer, celebrity or algorithm.

Because being yourself has never required being completely different from everybody else.

It simply requires knowing the difference between "I like this" and "I'm supposed to like this."

That's a pretty important distinction.

Especially when everybody has the same phone in their hand telling them what to like next.

Maybe originality isn't dead.

Maybe it's just buried underneath everybody else's influence.

And perhaps the most original thing you can do these days...

is stop scrolling long enough to figure out what you actually think.

Connected to Everyone, Known by No One

We built a world where you can order groceries, earn a paycheck, and talk to a squad of gamers in three time zones without ever looking another human in the eye. We called it progress. So why does everyone feel so isolated?

We are plugged into every person on the planet, yet sitting in a room by ourselves, staring at a screen, wondering why we feel so disconnected. Let’s be honest—we didn't land here by accident. Society didn't just drift into loneliness; we optimized our way into it. We traded the inconvenience of real human interaction for the seamless comfort of living behind a glass box.

The Machine

Every major shift in how we work, play, and communicate over the last decade has been designed to eliminate the need to interact with an actual physical human being:

• Remote Work: We traded the morning commute and office chatter for Zoom calls and Slack pings. On paper, it’s a win—no small talk by the coffee pot. In practice, we eliminated the accidental social touchpoints that keep us grounded.

• Digital Recreation: Multiplayer video games replaced local sports leagues and community clubs. You can spend five hours talking through a headset to a squad across the globe, yet finish the night without having made eye contact with a single person.

• Social Media Messaging: DMs, comments, and texting replaced real-time conversation. We get to edit, pause, and control our communication, but we lose the messy, spontaneous chemistry of live human connection.

We called it convenience. What we actually built was a structural encouragement to stay completely alone.

Present, But Not Accountable

Even when we do leave our homes, are we actually there?

Walk into any coffee shop, ride any train, or sit in any park. People are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, completely wrapped in their own digital bubbles. Noise-canceling headphones are clamped on tight. Eyes are locked onto cell phones. We occupy the same physical coordinates, but we inhabit completely different virtual universes.

Being in public used to require a baseline of presence—a nod to a neighbor, a brief exchange with a barista, or simply observing the world around us. Today, physical space is just the background environment where we wait until we can check our notifications again.

Starving for Presence

Social media promised us connection, but what it gave us was audience-building. Having 500 people view your story isn't the same as having one person ask how your day went over a cup of coffee. We are starving for real presence while being gorged on digital updates.

The common-sense truth is simple: people are not built to be remote observers of life. Real connection requires friction. It requires showing up, listening without a screen in front of your face, and tolerating the awkwardness of being truly present in a room.

Some of the best memories I have as an adult is working the night shift with a coworker of mine. The conversations we had were priceless and entertaining. A lot of them have led to some of the posts that you've read here over the years. 

But what if were glued to smart phones/internet back then? Would we have even had 1/3 of the conversations that we did?

How to Reclaim Real Connection

If we want to stop feeling isolated, we have to intentionally reintroduce being present into our lives:

1. Leave the headphones off in public: The next time you're getting coffee or riding transit, stay open to the room around you. (side note: in today's volatile climate it could save your life!)

2. Trade two DMs for one phone or in-person call: Stop sending paragraph-long text chains to friends you haven't seen in months. Pick up the phone or pick a spot to meet.

3. Practice unstructured presence: Spend at least 30 minutes a day completely screen-free—no background podcast, no passive scrolling, just being where your feet are.

Until we start treating real-world presence as a necessity rather than an inconvenience, we will keep swiping, liking, and typing our way into feeling completely alone.