When progress steals the ‘kick’ from life

Theother day, while travelling to my native village, something quietly unsettling happened. I have known that route since childhood, not just the main road but every deviation, every banyan and neem tree, along the roue and every shortcut connecting at least fifty surrounding villages. I was born there, grew up there, and spent the better part of my youth navigating those paths long before signboards existed.

Yet this time, urged enthusiastically by my children, I switched on Google Maps for the driver. As the blue arrow obediently guided us turn by turn, efficiency replaced memory. Certainty replaced curiosity. But the kick of the good old days was missing.

I felt a gentle sadness realizing that we no longer have opportunities to ask directions from a village passer-by holding a hand-rolled cigar and his waistcloth hitched up in typical rural style. The brief conversation with a stranger who becomes a guide correcting human doubt was absent. That small thrill of being lost and found again by people, not by pixels-small dots of light on a phone, was missing. Well, it was not just about the road but about life itself.

That small surrender, choosing certainty over experience, convenience over engagement, felt harmless, even sensible. Yet it reflected something much larger than a navigation choice. It captured the spirit of our times-a steady movement away from effort, involvement, and human exchange toward seamless efficiency. What was gained in speed quietly replaced the kick and the lived satisfaction that once accompanied. Earlier, progress meant effort and tomorrow it could result in complete absence of human involvement.

When we imagine ‘The future maddeningly advanced world,’ we must pause and ask, where is the high, the thrill, the struggle, and the satisfaction, that once defined living!

For instance, consider the humble car. Its earliest avatar demanded intimacy between man and machine. A peculiar Z-shaped iron rod had to be inserted and rotated with force. One wrong move and the engine could kick back, injuring the driver. It was risky, noisy, physical, but alive. Then came self-starts and before we knew automatic transmission had arrived. Today, cars park themselves, correct the driver, and drive without anyone. We call this evolution, but something disappeared. Ys, the kick is missing.

There was a time when cricket matches stretched across five days, players wore whites, and patience was as important as power. The umpire stood as the final authority where human judgment was final. The subsequent ODIs and T20s gave birth to third umpires, replays, ball-tracking and edge detection. What next? And the kick is missing.

From childbirth to death, life itself is mechanical. Food arrives at the door with a click. Milk no longer knows the cow. Curd is cultured in factories. Every provision we require comes packed, sealed, barcoded, sanitized. Choice exists in abundance, yet involvement is absent.

Medicines are prescribed by algorithms. The doctor by search engines. The hospital by online opinions. Google is the new multi-super-specialist and ChatGPT the ultimate consultant. It seldom goes wrong. Everything is available, yet nothing is earned. And the kick is missing.

Once, we touched the cloth, held it against the light, imagined it becoming part of our daily life. We walked to the familiar tailor, who knew our posture, habits, and even temperament. The first fitting, the second adjustment, the final satisfaction, and that was the kick. Today, the tailor is almost extinct. We are expected to settle for ‘ready-mades’ that fit no one perfectly. The barber has been replaced by apps.

Reading has followed the same path. Books once had weight, smell, margin notes, damaged pages that marked not just chapters but moments in life. We returned to passages and rediscovered ourselves. Today, everything is searchable. Kindle remembers for us, Google summarizes for us, and ChatGPT writes for us. We no longer linger with ideas. Knowledge is instant, but wisdom slow, repetitive, reflective, and endangered. Handwriting required thought and revealed mood. Pauses meant something. Letters vanished. Receiving a letter was an event. Now messages arrive instantly, carelessly, and disappear just as fast.

Music, too, has changed. There was a time when we waited for a song on the radio, adjusted the antenna, sat still, listened fully. The wait sharpened the pleasure. Now music plays endlessly in the background, unheard, and unfelt. Even memory has been outsourced. We no longer remember phone numbers, birthdays, routes, or recipes. Forgetting is no longer human, it is mechanical. All these changes point to one truth that life has not become easier but solvent. The question is: How can we live meaningfully in a world rushing ahead, when our wisdom belongs to a slower rhythm?

The answer is not resistance, but selective slowing to restore the kick of yore. For the young speed is excitement. For the old depth is joy. Society must respect both.

Late life does not need acceleration but meaning. It needs spaces where experience is valued over efficiency, and where the kick comes not from novelty but from recognition. Progress should add years to life, and life to years. And that life, often, moves best at a human pace. To me at 78 years of age, optimism is no longer noisy.

Technology will not reverse. The world will not unlearn speed. The kick in many areas of life, may never fully come back. Yet surrender is not wisdom either. There remains a narrow but vital space where choice still survives. We may not decide the direction of the world, but we can decide the distance we keep from it. We can step back without stepping away and participate without dissolving.

We sit with crossed fingers, not in fear, but in fragile faith. Progress may be unstoppable. But meaning, if guarded carefully, still is not. Whom do we blame? The scientist who invented? The engineer who refined? The market that demanded convenience? The youth who adapted quickly? Or ourselves, who welcomed ease without asking its price? There is no single culprit and so, none can be blamed. Change did not arrive as an intruder, but it arrived as an invitation. We accepted gratefully. And yet, consequences remain even without culprits. The question does not point outward. It circles back quietly that ‘when everything became easier, why did we stop asking what we were giving up?’ There is something to learn.

And perhaps that is the last responsibility left for us, to leave behind not solutions but questions worth asking before the world moves on too fast to notice them. This shall remain the question mark.