Our attention is finite, yet we spend it everywhere but where it matters. This is not a moral failure. It is a structural one. Attention economics is the idea that in a world overflowing with information, human attention becomes the scarce resource. Whoever captures it, holds power. Over time, this has reshaped not just markets, but inner lives. What we notice. What we ignore. What we can tolerate. What we can no longer sit with. For a long time, people warned that television would rot our brains. In hindsight, television looks almost generous. A show required you to stay for forty minutes. A film asked for two hours. A detective story invited you to notice details, to remember names, to hold multiple threads in your mind at once. You watched. You followed. You waited. Listening to music meant staying long enough to learn lyrics. Reading meant sitting with confusion until meaning arrived. Writing a poem meant wrestling with language, not skimming it. Even boredom had a purpose—it ...
When the dream finally comes true, but you don’t feel happy. A few days ago, I got braces. Not the kind where you just wake up and decide to get them—but the kind I’ve wanted since I was young. My mum, doing the best she could, got me braces for my upper jaw. We couldn't afford the full treatment then. But that desire to complete what was started? It never left me. So I saved. For months. Quietly, diligently. And when the day finally came, I got them. Full braces. A dream finally realized. But almost immediately, I noticed something strange. I wasn’t excited. I wasn’t proud. I wasn’t even relieved. I just felt… tired. Drained. From day one, I started wondering why I wasn’t happy. Why couldn’t I enjoy the moment? I had worked for this. I had saved for this. I had made peace with the cost. So why couldn’t I smile—beyond the metal wires? Instead, I found myself worrying. “Will I ever get to enjoy my tiny home someday—or will I just feel like this again?” You see, that tiny home ...