It’s curious how social media has gradually shaped, with invisible hands, the face of our generation. Our attention span has shrunk like a night-blooming flower at dawn; outdoor activities fade more and more each day, like a distant echo, a forgotten postcard. We find ourselves immersed in an artificial world—not only digitally—but also in the collective fictions we uphold in order to function as a species: money, the economy, work… necessary fictions, yet fictions nonetheless.

We chase instant pleasure with the desperation of someone thirsty in a desert, while silence—that ancient ally of the soul—has become a feared stranger, almost an enemy. When did being alone with ourselves become unbearable? The noise outside drowns out the subtle whispers of thought, yet it is in those quiet spaces that great ideas are born. Boredom, so often demonized, is frequently the threshold of creativity.

What’s so wrong with spending a few hours in the company of your own thoughts, with nothing but the murmur of your mind brushing gently against you like a breeze? Could it be that we fear what we might discover within? Or have we simply forgotten who we are—and now silence unsettles us the same way it does when shared with a stranger?

Over time, I’ve stopped seeing that old piece of advice our grandparents gave us—half scolding, half worried—as mere nostalgia:
“You should go outside and touch some grass.”
They said it not understanding how we could spend so many hours glued to a screen, trapped in a world of blue light and windows that lead nowhere. Who would’ve guessed that those same grandparents would one day learn how to browse Netflix or make video calls—asking, between chuckles and frustration, how to switch series on their Smart TVs.

We live in an age where digital tools have shortened geographic distances, but widened emotional gaps. We can talk to someone across the globe in seconds, yet we rarely connect with those right beside us.
When was the last time you wrote a letter by hand?
Or received one that wasn’t from a bank or a politician begging for your vote?
When was the last time you truly connected with a stranger at a park or on the street?

Our phones, our playlists, our constant notifications keep us so distracted that we sometimes forget to look around. Someone could be out there offering smiles—or even handing out money (hypothetically, of course, and if so, beware: it’s probably a scam)—and we wouldn’t even notice, because our headphones are blasting the latest popular song, filled with recycled themes and empty words.

Where did that sense of safe community go?
That familiar greeting to a neighbor that came not from politeness but from genuine connection?

I write this because I refuse to surrender. Because I still believe in the possibility of a more human world. Perhaps someone, upon reading these words, will feel inspired to go outside, to look up at the sky without a filter, to listen to the song of a bird as if it were the first time. To let themselves be surprised, like a child seeing the world without the scars of cynicism.

If you, reader, are also an idealist—if you still believe there is beauty beyond the gray headlines and the algorithms that divide us—then I invite you, with all my heart:
go touch some grass.
Not as a trivial act, but as a gesture of reconciliation with simplicity, with what is real, with what is alive.

Take care, and may today not just be just a productive day but a day that is truly yours.