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 ...
There was a time when companionship did not need to be searched for. It was not something you worked at , scheduled weeks in advance, or justified with a reason. It existed quietly, built into the structure of life itself. In many Kenyan communities, companionship was inherited before it was chosen. People grew up among the same faces, attended the same ceremonies, worked the same land, worshipped in the same spaces. Marriage did not scatter people; it anchored them. Women married into homes where other women were already present—sisters-in-law, neighbors, age-mates—often navigating the same stages of life at the same time. Men remained near their childhood friends, their brothers, their cousins. Friendship was not curated; it was ambient. You did not have to explain why you were visiting. You did not have to perform usefulness. You did not have to be interesting. Presence was enough. Companionship was not a special category of relationship. It was simply life unfolding alongside...