There are moments in life when you wonder if there is still a time for thinking, and for having conversations with (some level of) meaning. And if you yourself are having any kind of relevant impact in the lives of the ones around you, other than the occasional giggle one may have when reading a witty comment, an ironic status update or an irrelevantly funny result of a test, or game, or quiz.

One one side, there is work. If you are lucky enough to have one, and even luckier to somehow like it (or simply not detest it with all your soul), it is ever consuming. Workdays have a beginning, but they really know no end, and work weeks definitely start on Monday, but there is no stopping on weekends (only for the ones already enlightened enough to know how to switch their brains – and concerns – off) nor on vacations. Not sure if it is true, but someone said it takes at least one week to get the focus out of the work when on vacation. Since vacations that last more than 10 days are a luxury, you do the math.

Moving towards the personal side of things – if work even allows an idea of private time –  one does, most of the time, feel torn between the utter inability of doing anything productive due to the numbness of a mind consumed by work, or the utter inability of doing anything productive due to the numbness of a mind consumed by drinking out of a firehose of information coming from everywhere, and an ever increasing expectation of having your own “interestingness factor”, measured by your private interest, be it gardening, cooking or collecting 17th century antique knives.

And from all this comes the question, or maybe the question creates all of this, that is: is there still time for meaning? After you are done with the basics – you are not a college student anymore, and have a work, a house, maybe even a partner – is that the time when meaning gets back to one’s life? When you can actually stop and think, and maybe even build something of intellectual value, relationships that matter, and feel some level of personal accomplishment? 

Or is it just a binary choice of either going full throttle into work and wait for the mid-life crisis to kick in (and realize it is too late) or throw yourself into the somewhat funny though not necessarily life changing past times that are exactly that: past times (until you again realize it is too late)? Or is there actually no choice?

This post has no answers, no tips, no solutions – and most likely not even a clear topic nor subject. It is just a short, personal acknowledgement that the 140 characters communication culture and the all encompassing network  of user generated content we, in selected places, live in, may simply be yet another distraction  from ourselves.