We have time for 10-minute audio messages, but not for a coffee.

PalmWhy do we need to make appointments to meet up with friends? We're too busy, we have too many things to do. We've become slaves to Google Calendar. We've settled into hyper-productive routines in our notes.

I'm hesitating about whether to write about it or not. I'm not sure where this thread I want to pull will lead me: whether it will unravel all my seams or if it's just a loose end that was left hanging. I'm also hesitating because this topic has already been discussed enough. And quite well (my colleague Claudia Darder, in fact, reminded us that "We have the power to be happy", in a Substack publication on this subject).

Even so, I review my recent notes on my phone to remember what made me open this app with the impulse to archive a thought, and I confirm my habit. "Why do we need to make an appointment to meet up with friends?" I asked myself on November 16th. It was just ten days before Juanjo Villalba began his viral article like this.Eldiario.es, 'The culture of staying up to catch up with friendsIt seems like I have to make an appointment just to have a coffee with them, as if I were getting a manicure.'. A month has passed between the day I wrote this down and the moment I'm writing this, but I can't ignore the suspicion of why I was asking myself that question. Especially since, first and foremost, I asked it to myself in the singular and with guilt: "Why does it seem like you need an appointment to see me?"

A Those who dream the golden dream In (Mondadori, 1966), Joan Didion reflects on 'Keeping a Notebook': "Why did I write it down? Well, to remember it, of course, but what exactly did I want to remember? (...) The impulse to write things down is peculiarly compulsive, not only inexplicable but also secondary, in the same way that all compulsions try to justify themselves (...) But our notebooks betray us (...), we are chatting about something private, about fragments of the mental chain that are too short to use, about an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage." How lucky we are that Didion helps us understand ourselves a little better.

Hyperproductive routines and efficient relationships

I still don't know if it's in the form of worry or remorse, but the issue lingers in my mind, like the buzzing of a fly, sometimes more intense, sometimes distant, and always annoying. We've become slaves to Google Calendar. We've settled into hyper-productive routines in our notes. It's impossible for us to improvise a get-together during the week or come home a little later for a few beers. Work-Pilates/Yoga/Ceramics-Shopping-House. And weekends are booked three weeks in advance. Not a single free slot.Full speed ahead!"as a default response, as a perpetual state.

We're too busy, we have too many things to do. But we do send each other 10-minute voice messages, that's for sure. The mobile phone becomes the methadone, the placebo: it gives us a version light We believe that what we want has the same effect. We have deep conversations, explain our day to each other, and send each other photos and videos of whatever is necessary. It makes us feel that, at least, we are in contactAnd so we live our lives, like Sims. We confine experiences, everything we share, to a screen. We kill conversations with blue ticks and audio clips that "you can listen to on x2." Everything is more digital, less face-to-face. Little live interaction, much delayed. Efficient. Are we resigned to this, or are we simply finding solace? Where are we going in such a hurry? Why don't we want to believe that things are simpler?

Or at least that's how it seems to Mari Carmen, for whom things are simpler. I met Mari Carmen and her husband Joan two weeks ago, when a scare on the road left my mother and me—and our two belongings—taking refuge in their house, outside, for a whole morning. "Come in, come in. Stay all the time you need. It's right here. What would you like to drink?" they suddenly asked us, while they cleaned the house. They were expecting guests: the whole family, more than ten people. However, I felt that this unexpected event complicated my life more, since I had nothing to do, than it did theirs.

After a while, Mari Carmen brought another chair out into the sun and sat down with me, while I waited for my mother to return with the car. Phone in hand, she began to tell me snippets of her life, through the images she selected from her photo gallery: her dogs, her sister, her work. Every now and then, a guest would phone to ask if they needed bread, or if she needed to pick someone up. She'd answer and then suddenly return to the conversation we were having, as if that were now her priority, accepting that things are more unavoidable than we'd like.

Neither Mari Carmen nor her husband had time that morning to stop everything, open their home to us, and be there for us. And yet, we don't have a moment to go for coffee on a Wednesday afternoon. We're afraid of spontaneity, of breaking our routine. Our routine is the most important thing. But if our routine were to be disrupted, we'd all want a Mari Carmen nearby.