“Who doesn’t want that?” I wonder as I fire off emails for one job on one device, while skimming a document for a second job on another. “Who doesn’t want more ease?” I think, as I look around my apartment bedroom, with its efficient closet organization system and a nightstand purchased from Facebook Marketplace — perfectly practical. Nothing is excessive and everything is purposeful, but it’s a sterile place to exist, where function trumps comfort.

The truth is, I don’t always want this kind of life.

Just like Amtrak citing prepackaged meals as a chic and contemporary workaround to a prepared meal, the emphasis on ease — on maximizing every second — is supposed to be sexy. But it can feel exhausting.

The idea that young people like me are always on the go, always in transition and always on masks that we might actually desire slowness, want to relish an experience, or enjoy taking a moment to feel comfortable and human instead of curated and optimized.

Our experiences at work, in our homes and even in transit can be chopped up into pieces of purpose and service. Anything else — any lingering, any human ity — can feel superfluous, or even wasteful, especially for a generation scapegoated as entitled for wanting things that used to be considered basic. It’s as though doing more (even when we’re doing something as simple and sedentary as riding a train) with less is always the ultimate goal.

It’s not difficult to see why, when an advertisement highlighting convenience and quickness pops up, we believe maybe this really is the thing that will make life better. Maybe this is what “contemporary” looks like. But I wish small things — meals on a train, unplanned moments that can’t be logged as self-improvement or furniture that is owned — didn’t feel old-fashioned. I wish people knew that my generation wants more than to optimize our lives, or to feel trendy because of how fast we’re hustling. I wish slowing down didn’t feel like a luxury.

Rainesford Stauffer is the author of the forthcoming book “An Ordinary Age.”

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