Somewhere Along The Way...

We are in the age of AI. Everything is either already automated or in the process of becoming so. From the smallest things to the largest, life has become simpler, easier.

And in many ways, that ease made people lazy.

We don’t clean our places ourselves anymore. We don’t write ourselves, arrange things ourselves, and sometimes we don’t even think fully by ourselves. At one point, the world shown in WALL-E felt uncomfortably close to reality.

But that doesn’t feel true anymore. The shift happened slowly, and somewhere along the way, people began to notice and push back.

As someone rightly said, “Humans are meant to create. That’s why we get depressed when we only

consume.”

And that awareness shows.

Going Back To Creating

People are going back to creating again. They’re also going back to old tools — not old as in the 2010s, but older. The 70s. The 80s.

I’ve seen an influencer using a manual hand-held juicer instead of an electric one. Someone keeps little old Lenox Village containers in their kitchen. Someone else preserved their grandmother’s kitchen exactly as it was, because it turned out to be much more accessible and productive to use.

Old fashion, old songs, old ways of living, old ways of raising kids. It feels like people have subconsciously realised that this might have been the better way to live life, not just breathe through it by automating everything.

Health As A Present Choice

Youth today are far more health-conscious. They go to gyms, hike, cycle, and run marathons. Alcohol doesn’t hold the same place it once did — younger generations drink far less than before, and that has impacted alcohol sales globally. At the same time, there’s more spending on skincare across genders.

Health doesn’t feel like something to fix later anymore. It’s part of everyday thinking.

A Quieter Relationship With Money

Financial thinking has changed, too.

People are less logo-conscious. Spending feels quieter. Status feels less performative. The rigid dream of buying a house, even if it means decades of loans, doesn’t feel mandatory anymore.

Life planning feels more mindful. Even decisions like having children aren’t made blindly with a “we’ll see when it happens” attitude, especially when it comes to financial responsibility.

Softer Ways Of Living

People speak up against workplace unfairness more often. There’s less tolerance for bullying. More people are in tune with their inner selves. Therapy isn’t taboo. Yoga is about mental peace, not trends.

Living in the moment doesn’t feel careless — it feels conscious.

And somewhere in all of this, I’ve noticed something else that feels small, but meaningful.

In recent years, youth seem to be re-living parts of their childhood. In India, I’ve seen youngsters dancing to truck horns when stuck in traffic jams instead of yelling or honking back.

In Europe, during a sudden power outage caused by a storm, people came out onto the streets, danced together, and turned the pause into a shared moment.

In South Korea, university students and office trainees have started playing games like tag and hide-and-seek on the streets again.

These aren’t children with nothing to worry about. These are people with deadlines, pressure, stress. They could have chosen alcohol, gaming, or numbing distractions.

But they chose childhood.

All of this genuinely makes me happy to see.

With the constant overload of difficult news and stories of violence and loss, I hope this serves as a reminder that the world is healing in some parts, through people, too. And maybe that’s enough for now. Maybe that’s the motivation we need to live again.

Wishing the best for the world.

Coffee Of The Day

Iced Milo latte.

Because it sits somewhere between childhood and adulthood — familiar, comforting, but no longer naive. Maybe not something adults reach for often anymore, but perhaps something worth returning to.

A small, gentle way to carry childhood forward without letting go of who we are now.

~The Stressed Potato