1. A fascinating BBC podcast series hosted by Oliver Burkeman just released a new episode this week. Entitled “Oliver Burkeman’s Inconvenient Truth,” Burkeman examines how modern conveniences have affected us psychologically and spiritually, for better or for worse. There are many modern conveniences that are beneficial to our lives, like wifi, rent autopay, or audio transcriptions (ehem, my love/hate relationship with podcasts).

Some conveniences, however, may hinder our ability to live full lives. The internet, for example, has allowed younger generations to avoid people with a simple unfollow or block. Unlike that one in-law at Thanksgiving dinner, online platforms have allowed us to mute those we no longer want to hear. Conflict, discomfort, and annoyances have become something we can avoid should we choose it — perhaps even something we believe we shouldn’t have to experience in the first place. As modern philosopher Julian Baggini stated on the episode,

One of the problems of living in a culture in which so much has become very convenient is that inconvenience begins to seem like some kind of imposition rather than the standard default way of being.

Similarly, Jonathan Rowson noted the negative effects of convenience on spirituality:

What it is for something to be convenient is not to ask too much of you. It’s to actually allow you to be relatively automatic and relatively asleep. Most of what we do is on autopilot, habitual, but every so often we encounter something where the automatic system doesn’t quite know what to do and we’re brought back to a kind of consciousness where we have to think: “Okay, what’s going on here? Let’s attend to this more carefully and do something that isn’t quite as automatic.” And a lot of what goes on in the world is we’re sold the convenience of not having to have those moments too often … Now those moments are experienced and framed typically as problematic, but it’s the only moments, in a sense, where we’re really alive. So, convenience is a way of killing us at some level.

Convenience, it seems, is another numbing agent when it comes to pain, while inconvenience brings discomfort and frustration. It reminds us that life may not be going the way we would like it to be, that we have limitations, that we have problems that cannot be solved. And as much as we may try, we cannot avoid inconvenience. But inconveniences, for all the discomfort they can bring, are something we all experience together. They keep us from distancing ourselves from one another and going through life alone.

2. Last month, I received various emoji and exclamation mark laden text messages from a beauty consultant who got my phone number from a Mary Kay party I had attended four years ago. The reason? To keep in touch about the brand’s latest sales and make promises that I can “text or call her personal cell at any time.” (Talk about convenient!) Such a promise is one that is mostly reserved for close friends or family members, but it is clear that my business is actually the purpose of her kind messages.

Multilevel marketing is everywhere — like my mom’s “friend” who sells her lavender and eucalyptus doTerra essential oils, the lady on Facebook that throws Thirty-One bag parties (they’re actually great bags btw), or the infamous LuLaRoe leggings featured on an Amazon Prime documentary series. According to Clare Coffey at Plough, pyramid schemes aren’t the only things selling friendship, it can happen wherever a personal brand is concerned:

Plenty of writers network with each other, with various degrees of prudence, generosity, affability, and craven ambition. But you have hit an elite level when proximity to your glamor, and the possibility of your friendship, is a product you can sell.

In fact, if you start looking, the move from straightforward friendships of utility (common to realtors, salesmen, writers, professionals of all stripes) toward a commodification of friendship itself pops up more and more. It is the engine that drives all the parasocial professions, where posters, podcasters, content creators of all kinds can make a living from creating cultural products – many of them very good – but also from managing their own clout and their audience’s desire for access to it.

Social media, once focusing on photo sharing with friends and family, has since become more about following the lives of celebrities, famous writers, and influencers. As long as people have access to certain parts of a celebrity’s life, they will continue to feel entitled to have an opinion about the decisions and actions of said celebrity (read: the Taylor Swift, Ice Spice, and Matty Healy debacle). The personal brand — which strives for authenticity (they’re just like us!) — has muddled the boundary between who we believe someone to be and who they really are. Where the internet has allowed fewer boundaries in terms of where and when we can communicate with others, it has created a vast chasm between what we think closeness is and what real intimacy actually looks like. Closeness is not synonymous with access to someone’s life. Real relationships are not media to consume nor products to sell, but rather connections built upon mutual understanding and trust. As much as you may trust your favorite Internet chef’s recipe for a Creamy White Chicken Chili, it doesn’t mean that they will come to your house bearing a bowl of it when you get sick.

Is there hope amidst the increasing commodification of relationships? Coffey dares to long for it:

But at the level beyond individual solutions, I have more of a hope than a prescription: for the internet to recede as the primary, quasi-public, third space of American life, and with it the ability and impetus to construct palatable, consumable versions of ourselves to market to others. I hope — as long as I’m hoping — for its replacement by spaces in which we can act and appear to others, where we build and work and speak, yet where nothing — least of all our friendship — is for sale.

3. Next up, Jay Caspian Kang wrote about the topic of losing for the New Yorker. Kang, who was directing a film about the Hall of Famer Michael Chang last year, started playing tennis more regularly. Tennis game losses soon became the norm — despite Kang’s best efforts to correct his serve by watching YouTube videos or purchasing the best equipment from Instagram ads. But the more Kang studied Michael Chang and tennis prodigy Tracy Austin, the more he realized that they had something he did not:

Precocious children, in general, are not really my thing. But, watching Austin and Chang, I sometimes found myself on the verge of tears, not from any joy or sadness but from that odd and exceedingly rare feeling that some innate logic of the universe has been exposed — that the normal linearity that we associate with human capabilities, in which we start as novices and improve through practice, grit, and failure, was proved irrelevant. This effect cannot be triggered by children who can shake out a passable Tchaikovsky concerto, or recite a poem by heart. It comes instead when that young person seems to possess a maturity in their performance that should be accessible only through life experience. Joey Alexander, a child-prodigy jazz pianist from Indonesia, played “ ’Round Midnight” at Lincoln Center at the age of ten with the patience and expansive curiosity of someone who had spent decades learning that song. When Alexander performed with adults, they invariably broke into a smile that suggested something more profound than admiration or even wonderment. What Alexander signified, and what Austin meant to Wallace, is the possibility of a painless existence, one in which all the hard-earned lessons of life are actually ingrained, and the path to winning doesn’t require all that losing.

Unfortunately, even our best efforts and countless hours of practice cannot keep us from the embarrassment of losing. Sam Bush, in his recent piece for Mockingbird, brilliantly wrote, “If practice doesn’t make perfect, why are we working so hard? If mastery is beyond our control, all that is left to do is simply to enjoy those 10,000 hours.” There are few things that I enjoy that aren’t also intended to become future achievements or skills. I can’t remember the last thing I learned that wasn’t for the purpose of furthering my career or adding to my resume. But in the Kingdom of God, our wins are as irrelevant as our losses — the loss was taken on our behalf and the victory won.

4. Competitive athletics and music aren’t the only things we strive to master. The search for perfection permeates even the seemingly mundane aspects of our lives — like coffee makers, home decor, or even the way we keep our refrigerators organized. Mbird favorite Anne Helen Petersen wrote in her recent Substack about “Optimization Sinkholes”:

“One under-appreciated consequence of believing there is such a thing as the ‘one best way’ in every aspect of life is subsequently living with the unyielding pressure to discover it and the inevitable and perpetual frustration of failing to achieve it,” Sacacas writes. “And not only frustration. It produces anxiety, fear, compulsiveness, resignation, and, ultimately, self-loathing. If there is “one best way,” how will I know it? If I have not found it, have I failed? And is it my fault?” […]

Remodeling is the attempt to find “the one best way” with our physical spaces; wellness culture is “the one best way” with our bodies; productivity culture is “the one best way” with our work lives. And like all quests for optimization, they’re sinkholes. You think you’re standing on solid ground, just scrolling your phone dreaming about a steam oven and downloading a new list-making app and listening to someone on TikTok emphatically tell you you’re doing [blank] wrong, but then you look up and realize you’re not just trying to make a few things better, or easier, or more straightforward — you’re dissatisfied with your whole damn life, and have been for some time. […]

This is the point where someone deep in the throes of one of these improvement cultures — or even just dead-set on finding the perfect coffeemaker — might tell you: But I like it. It’s fun for me. It’s my hobby. It gives me pleasure. If you’re an interior designer, if you see home space as an artistic tapestry, I get this; I believe you. But I also believe that we’ve collectively become very good at mistaking the feelings of optimization, organization, and control for fun. Organizing your fridge is not fun. Neither is watching someone do it. It is satisfying, and it is satisfying because it offers a flicker of control amidst the natural and amplified chaos of our lives.

Mistaking the feeling of control for fun? Oof. We want the newest smartphones, the most effective diets, our dream homes with their perfect backyards — we want satisfying lives that we think will bring us lasting happiness. We’ve also collectively become very good at reaching for the next product or program that promises perfection. When what we really need is love that is promised to us despite our imperfections.

5. For kicks and giggles, look no further than Reductress’ recent article entitled, “‘You Need to Get off Medication and Work Through Your Trauma,’ Says Person Whose Parents Wanted Them.”

“It’s really important to approach mental health care holistically,” Forrest shared. “Holistically means, like, no meds, no talk therapy, maybe some psychedelics, and a really good hug.”

Or perhaps, according to Points In Case, holistic mental health care looks like blasting your favorite emotional ballad at a dive bar, “Let’s Not Make Fun of the Guy Playing “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on the Jukebox, He’s Probably Going through a Lot.” And last but not least, a cartoon from the New Yorker the perfectly illustrates the moral panic that occurs nowadays when we dispose of our trash. Maybe the fact that my mom regularly composts can save me from the guilt I still feel from those times I accidentally put my leftover food in the trash?

6. And finally, a short but incredibly on topic essay from Mark Anderson at 1517.

How well you manage life and accomplishment in this world is not the final point of living. This is one dimension of the parable of the Prodigal Son. He squandered his life away in the far country. But even if he had used his inheritance to make it, to arrive, to become a success in the far country, he would still have missed the point of living. Why? Because he would have still been estranged from his father. The point of his living would still have been defined by accomplishment, or lack of it, under the law.

We do not have God to be successful, to be healthy, to have peace, or to avoid squandering our lives in this way or that. The church, frequently tempted in this direction, often finds itself shipwrecked on the rocks of a shallow, prosperity gospel, the gospel of the God who is the means to an end. But God is not a means to an end. God is the end of living, the destination, the point of it all. Having God, we have enough. The fact of the matter is that God hasn’t promised us anything else. God could have overwhelmed us with material prosperity and not made a dent in the celestial treasury. It would have cost him nothing of himself to establish us as creatures for whom material comforts would have been enough. But God wanted more for us. […]

For amid life’s hurts and hopes, joys and sorrows, wins and losses you are held in the embrace of your living, loving Lord. And when you have him, you have everything.

Strays:

• The last episode of The Mockingcast before the summer hiatus is now available to stream! RJ, Sarah, and Dave talk tip creep, accomplished achievers, grieving comedians, and Tim Keller. Also, a Condon brings home the trophy for Best Dancer at the Middle School Dance. Listen on Apple, Spotify, Fireside, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• Spoilers ahead for the Season 3 of Ted Lasso in Vulture‘s recap of the finale.
• People are using theology to interpret art again, as London’s Nation Gallery and Berlin’s Bode Museum and Gemäldegalerie break the taboo.
• Received, Not Made: Bonhoeffer’s Vision for Christian Community.

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