Life has changed a lot in the almost 66 years I've been walking around on this planet.
While many of these changes are undeniably good, there are also quite a few changes that are not so good, and actually worry me for the future of humanity.
When I think about my life and what I enjoy doing — what gives life meaning, color and purpose — my best moments have invariably involved active hands-on creativity in some fashion. It could be planning and working in the garden, or it might be doing some painting or woodworking, and it might even be writing. These are the situations in which I get my deepest feelings of wellness and life satisfaction.
It is also in this context that I sometimes can't help but feel that the Internet is — or has — a problem. And that problem is that the majority of the time, what we do online revolves around consuming. In fact, we do far more consuming than we do creating.
And when I say "consuming," I mean anything from sitting in front of our electronic device doomscrolling for three hours to watching endless videos of kittens because we just can't bring ourselves to step away from the next cute video.
I remember way back in another life — when I had a retail gift gallery in Austin, Texas — one of the things we sold there was old fashioned fountain pens. Some of these were quite elaborate and rare and cost hundreds of dollars.
One of our best customers was a neurologist from San Antonio who was a keen fountain pen collector. But in addition to just being a collector he had also been studying the science of handwriting.
I use the term "science" here in the sense that what he was interested in was the brain's response to writing. One of the very interesting things was that at the research hospital where he worked they had been conducting experiments to see if there was any real difference between a creative writer typing on a keyboard and a writer riding long hand with a fountain pen.
With the help of first-hand observations and interviews, as well as fMRI equipment, he and his team surprisingly discovered that even if you sat down and typed something creative (like poetry) and then hand wrote the exact same thing you were using different parts of your brain.
When sitting at a keyboard and typing — even if you were trying to do something purely crestive, like write an essay or a blog post, the parts of the brain that were most active turned out to be the same parts that concern themselves with repetitive movement and doing mindless menial tasks that don't require any particular thought.
In contrast, the brains of people who were writing with the fountain pen showed up on the fMRI as using the same parts of the brain that you would use for a creative endeavor such as painting a picture or drawing a sketch.
Same words, different methodology.
What had gotten Dr Gordon interested in this particular phenomenon and field of study was the fact that he'd observed that people who did most of their writing by hand seemed to be generally less prone to depression and mood swings than people who predominantly wrote on keyboards.
To bring the bunny back around, the thing about spending so much time online being consumers of an assortment of content is that we actually end up with less and less time for hands-on creativity, and as a result we have less and less time for one of the things that could very well keep us from getting depressed.
Mental wellness is not merely about getting away from our screens, but also about using our hands for creative pursuits during that away time.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!
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2026.08.27 02:22 PDT
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