Arthur found the chart by accident.
He wasn't looking for news. He was just killing time while his coffee cooled—thumb drifting, mind half-awake—when a headline stopped him cold:
If they could choose, three times as many Americans would rather live in the past than the future.
He stared at the bar graph longer than he meant to.
Almost half would go backward.
A small handful would leap ahead.
And the rest—like him—would stay exactly where they were.
FUTURE →
Arthur didn't think it was nostalgia.
He thought people missed a time when mistakes faded instead of following you, when learning something new didn't require agreeing to ten updates, and when the world waited a beat before asking for more.
Out of habit, he opened the AI app on his phone.
"Why do you think people would rather live in the past than the future?" he typed.
The answer appeared instantly. Clear. Well-written. Confident.
Arthur read the first sentence…then stopped.
It wasn't wrong.
But it wasn't his thought anymore.
He closed the app and let the question come back to him slowly, the way it used to.
The future, he realized, wasn't frightening.
It was impatient, in a hurry.
Arthur looked around his kitchen. The same mug. The same chair. The same quiet.
Maybe the problem wasn't the future itself, he thought. Maybe it was being dragged there too fast.
He picked up a sticky note and wrote one sentence:
"I’m allowed to arrive at tomorrow at my own pace."
He stuck it to the fridge.
The coffee was finally cool enough to drink.
🧠 Mental Gym #4: Meet Your Own Thinking First
A two-minute exercise to strengthen intentional thinking in an AI-powered world.
Try this once today:
Ask AI a question you genuinely care about.
Before reading the answer, pause.
Ask yourself: What do I think?
You don't have to reject the answer.
Just meet your own thinking first.
This story was inspired by a Pew Research Center study on how Americans feel about the past, present, and future.
Until next Sunday.
Keep your pace human.
— Mike ☕️