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 ...
Africa is not a country. Love is not one thing. Africa is not a country. We’ve heard this phrase used to challenge oversimplified narratives — to remind us that the continent is vast, layered, and irreducibly complex. The same, I believe, applies to love . In many homes and relationships across Kenya, “love” is treated like a catch-all. “My mum loves me. She paid my school fees.” “My dad loves us. He built the house.” “My partner loves me. They send money.” These statements are often shared with pride, and sometimes with pain — an attempt to make sense of affection that felt either too conditional, too distant, or too one-sided. But provision is not presence . Obedience is not connection . And saying “I love you” is not the same as showing up in ways that meet a person’s emotional needs. What we often call love in our culture is vague, generic, and sometimes hollow. To truly heal, connect, and grow, we must learn to name love differently — in the language of care , ...