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 ...
In Kenya, survival is not just a phase—it becomes a personality. A way of life. We know how to stretch a coin, how to skip meals, how to walk instead of board, how to delay joy in service of something bigger. We know how to sacrifice . But no one ever teaches us how to stop . You fight to build a life. You give up weekends, comfort, health, joy— even yourself —so your child can finish school, so you can buy that plot, build that house, survive that disease, leave that bad marriage, or finally be free of the debt that has followed you like a shadow. Then the fight ends. The child graduates. The house is done. The cancer is in remission. The toxic relationship is over. The money finally makes sense. You made it. But now, you find yourself staring into the quiet… and you don’t know what to do with it. What Does It Mean to Live After You’ve Been in Survival Mode? A man once said, “I sacrificed everything so my children would have a better life. I don’t even know what I like anymor...