Age-Related Sloth—or . . . Focus?

I think the world of my brother-in-law. He’s a really impressive fellow with an array of talents and a keen interest in learning. So I was surprised to hear him suggest that he has recently been feeling like his mind is hardening to new technologies. It seemed somewhere between a lament and a confession. I noted that I sometimes wondered the same about myself—as recently as last week, actually, around the topic of TikTok. I then proposed that his expereience wasn’t so much born of fatigue but of experience and a grounded sense of self. He knows what his interests are. He’s aware of his sense of time and life. Why deploy energies needlessly on those specific topics he’s evaluated as wanting? There’s a difference between being picky and lazy.