The world can seem like a hostile place, and for some people, sadly, it undoubtedly is. But when it comes to those for whom it isn’t, I sometimes find myself wondering: how do they see the world? Honestly, I don’t know. And not because their perspective is beyond my reach, but because I wonder whether they’re even capable of seeing the world at all.

We’re constantly busy, surrounded by stimuli, connected all day long (or so it seems, although that connection is an illusion), yet disconnected from ourselves.

Now let me ask you this: when was the last time you sat in silence? The last time you truly listened to what your body had to tell you. The last time you walked through the streets of your city without your phone in your hand.

I’m not saying any of this because I’m some free spirit who spends all day in the woods singing and dancing among the trees. I’m saying it because, day after day, I see the world speeding up and the people living in it becoming increasingly detached from it.

People no longer talk to each other, pay attention to their surroundings, or sit down with a cup of coffee to take in the view and reflect.

We’re becoming more disconnected by the day, and the worst part is that we believe we’re more connected than ever. Forgive me for laughing at that idea, but from where I’m standing, the connection we have is practically nonexistent.

We can now reach someone on another continent, someone we might never even have known existed in a different era. We see hundreds, even thousands, of faces on our phones every day, but being able to connect with more people doesn’t mean we actually do.

How many of the people whose content you consume every day are your friends? How many are people you have meaningful conversations with, people you actually know? I’ll give you the answer: none, or perhaps a few; very few, in fact. The ratio of faces you see to people you actually connect with is tiny, or even close to zero.

So, when it comes to human connection, we might as well forget about it, at least the kind of connection many people, especially young people, believe they’re experiencing. Human connection has been declining over the past ten years, and that’s a real shame, given that the world is made up mostly of human beings. If the people who live on this planet don’t connect with one another, don’t even look each other in the eye, don’t respect one another, or show one another love, what do we have left?

How can you live in this world without connecting with or interacting with the people in it? Everything we do and everything that comes our way passes through human hands. The job opportunities that come your way do so through another person. The services you use are provided by people. The products you buy are made by people. Do you realize that without other people, your life as you know it today wouldn’t exist?

Our daily lives are a chain of human lives, all moving and interacting to give shape and meaning to our world. So why don’t we even bother to say hello to our neighbors when we see them? Why do we ignore the person next to us because we’re staring at our phone screens?

That’s what real connection looks like: it’s right in front of us, yet we ignore it because we’re so caught up in our phones that we believe we’re connecting with others. It’s pretty ironic when you think about it.

Now that we’ve touched on human connection, or rather, human disconnection, in a somewhat superficial way, I’m going to move on to the next point, which shares, in part, the same underlying cause as the first: our disconnection from the world.

The sheer amount of time we spend on social media and our digital devices makes us lose sight of what’s important: our lives. As I said earlier, connecting with others is important, but so is connecting with our surroundings. What should be part of our daily routine has become a luxury, something we treat as an afterthought, all because of the distraction and escapism offered by the internet and everything it encompasses.

I’m not going to tell you to take off your shoes and start walking barefoot on the grass (although, of course, you could do that if you wanted to), but you could try to make room in your routine for a moment of stillness and contemplation. A space, however small, to be truly present.

If you work somewhere other than home, you’ll find yourself walking out the door day after day. So why not use that moment, something you’re going to do anyway, to connect a little more with what’s around you, with the world you live in?

Look at your neighbors’ houses, the billboards you pass on the road, the trees and vegetation in the fields alongside the highway, even the road itself. What is the place around you like, the route you take to get to work? I’m sure you see it every day, but have you ever really stopped to take it in?

Obviously, if you’re driving, don’t take your eyes off the road (I wouldn’t want you to have an accident), but try to see your route in a different light. Look at the road with fresh eyes, paying attention to and appreciating what surrounds you. Take in the place you’re in, the one that’s become part of your life.

You don’t need anything else. You don’t have to create an impossible routine built around silence, solitude and stillness; we’ll leave that to the Buddhist monks. You don’t have to remove anything from your schedule or give up any of your usual activities. You simply have to choose to be truly present at some point during your day, even if it’s just for a minute.

Of course, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. This is simply an invitation, but the reason I suggest it is that, after a long period of observation whenever I leave home, I’ve noticed a pattern that’s both widespread and deeply ingrained in today’s society.

Day after day, I see people walking through the city center without paying the slightest attention to the places they’re passing through, without being truly present. And it’s not just because they’re focused on their phones, although that’s certainly the case for a large part of the population. It’s just that they’re either walking in a hurry or so distracted that they don’t even realize they’re walking down the street.

Unfortunately, a large percentage of people live on autopilot, going through one action after another in their daily lives without even being aware of it, without taking so much as a second to stop and consciously decide to do something.

Now let me ask you this: how many times have you found yourself unlocking your phone out of habit, without actually wanting to do so? How many times have you opened a social media app simply because it’s a mechanical action, and your brain already knows exactly where to find the app’s icon on your home screen, since it’s something you do so frequently?

All of this, and many of the things we do every day in general, happens automatically, without the brain taking even a second to make a decision. In other words, we spend a large part of our lives without being present, without truly living them. If we’re not distracted by our phones, we’re distracted because whatever we’re doing is routine, something our bodies can do automatically without us being present. In the long run, this is counterproductive, as it means our days go by without us truly living them.

Sadly, being disconnected from the world and from life itself has become fairly normalized. It’s so deeply ingrained in society that, more often than not, we aren’t even aware we’re doing it.

In fact, this doesn’t just happen with people and physical places. We can extend this idea even to the objects that are part of our everyday lives, since we only really pay attention to them when we buy them. Once we’ve acquired them, they become so familiar to us that we start taking them for granted and ignore them.

We use our phones without even looking at them, get dressed by choosing our clothes out of habit because we’re already so familiar with them, sit down to eat without noticing the details of the wood grain on the table or the patterns on our plates…

But tell me, have you noticed that one of the tines on the fork you use to eat is slightly bent? Have you noticed the small scratch at the bottom of your phone case, caused by repeatedly plugging in your charger? Have you noticed that the label on the sweater you wear so often is worn out, to the point that the brand name is no longer visible?

These are just a few simple, seemingly insignificant examples, but they reveal our tendency to live without truly living, to be somewhere without actually being present.

With this reflection, I’m not trying to make you feel bad if you do any of these things, nor am I criticizing the way you live. What I really want to do is share my perspective and bring to your attention what I believe to be a widespread and deeply ingrained human tendency today: disconnection. I’m sharing this in case it’s something you’ve never even considered, so that you can consciously decide whether you’re happy living your life the way you do, or whether you’d rather try to be a little more present in your own life.

In conclusion, we are human beings living on a planet made up of human beings, yet we tend to forget that. That’s why I ask you: do you take the time to appreciate the planet you live on and the people around you? Are you present as you go about your daily life? Do you have meaningful conversations with the people around you? When was the last time you stopped to really take in your surroundings?

I suppose that, after all this, the question I really want to ask is: are you connected to what truly matters?