What’s happening in the Middle East?
How are the markets doing? Who are the richest people?
What’s the verdict on climate change or space data centers?
AI this and AI that.
Vacation photos from a high school acquaintance. A think piece from an ex-colleague you barely remember. A Substack post about a longevity protocol or an abstract intellectualized concept.
***
Lately, all of us are being pulled into the BIG WORLD, thanks to our phones and social media.
Some of these things can be consequential.
But most are so insignificant to our actual lives that they might as well be figments of our imagination.
***
What’s far more important and tangible to us is our small world.
The one we actually experience and interact with every day.
Our spouse and kids.
Our close family and friends.
Our colleagues and work. Our home, neighborhood, and local community.
Our own passions and aspirations. Our health and well-being.
Our meals, our conversations, our chores, our projects, our problems, our plans.
The little things that make up an actual life.
***
Our phones keep convincing us that the rest of the world is more important than the world we are actually living in.
They continually introduce us to the BIG WORLD things that are new, distant, urgent, controversial, surprising, or emotionally stimulating.
Our small world is none of those things.
It is familiar. It repeats. The same family. The same house. The same neighborhood. The same walk. The same friend. The same work.
None of these things are particularly novel. But they are the substance of our lives.
***
The BIG WORLD is never ending. Another election, another market crash, another scandal, another breaking news story.
Our small world is fleeting and finite.
Children grow up. Parents age and pass away. Friends may move away. Careers end. Passions fade. Our energy and health can wane.
Down the line, you won’t remember much about the BIG WORLD.
But you’d give anything to experience your small world again.
***
The BIG WORLD is enormous, but our influence over it is tiny. We are mere spectators.
Our small world is tiny, but our influence over it is enormous. We are the actors, and our small world actually cares about our presence.
You can’t do much about the oil prices.
But you can bring joy to your spouse or your mom with a surprise. You can make your kid laugh. You can savor a meal. You can feel better by going on a run or finishing a task. You can help a colleague or enjoy coffee with a friend.
***
Our time and attention are limited. They are zero-sum.
Every hour drawn into the BIG WORLD is an hour withdrawn from our small world.
We have become extraordinarily informed about the BIG WORLD and strangely inattentive to our own lives. Distant things seem closer, and close ones have become more distant.
Because the BIG WORLD seems fascinating.
But our small world is where we live.
Notes:
Also beware of global scoreboards! https://alearningaday.blog/2026/09/02/beware-global-scoreboards/
Agree and I try to heavily limit my time on those examples of the big world
There's another perspective of the big world though which is the grandness of the mountains and planets, the thousands of years it took to accumulate our human knowledge, the millions of years it took to evolve our complex brains, the billions of years it took to create our complex biology