Life Without Intermission
This post somehow is an extension of my earlier blog, For Ol’ Times’ Sake, written after meeting former colleagues at a reunion. I found myself thinking about the curious role memory plays in our lives, and one thought led to another. It was slightly unsettling to find out that the memories we revived that evening were from twenty or thirty years old. Yet, if I were to look at the last 15 years of my life, or even recent months…the recollections seemed strangely thinner. It was not that nothing had happened. If anything, life has been busier than ever. Yet somehow the experiences did not feel as firmly lodged in memory. This made me think, are we creating fewer memories today, even though we are having more experiences?
For example, let’s take music. I keep listening to Spotify or the local FM station in my daily commute. I tried remembering which was the most popular song that I would heard a number of times last year. Nothing stood out. Try this out for yourself, if you can recall… (According to Spotify’s annual wrap-up, the most streamed song in India in 2025 was “Raanjhan”). But this did not linger long enough to become a cultural marker in the way songs once did.
News moves even faster. One moment everyone is debating the curious episode involving robots episode at an AI Summit by Galgotias University. A few days later the conversation has shifted to something else entirely. I’m sure the Middle East interest will die within 72 hours of the ceasefire. Why, even in close circles, we hardly are talking about the India victory in the T20 World Cup..Everyone is busy discussing the upcoming IPL season.
All of this suggests that we have collectively become very good at something: moving on.
Moving on from one news cycle to another. From one cultural moment to the next. From one experience to the next before the previous one has had time to settle.
This pattern is visible even in the world of work. Earlier generations often spent decades within a single organisation, accumulating not just experience but also stories and shared memories. Today careers resemble a series of shorter engagements. LinkedIn is full of project-based work, consultants, fractional ‘something’. Employees move on from companies faster than before — and companies, it must be said, have also become quicker to move on from employees. Best part?, Neither side seems particularly surprised by the arrangement.
Part of the explanation lies in the rhythm of modern life. Earlier, life followed a relatively sequential path. School led to college, college to a job, and the job often stretched across decades. Experiences arrived in an orderly progression, like stations on a long train journey. When something unusual occurred, it interrupted the flow. People paused, talked about it, revisited it.
Today the map of life looks less like a straight railway line and more like the subway map of Tokyo — a dense network of lines intersecting, diverging and reconnecting in every direction. At any moment one can change tracks: switch careers, explore new interests, consume new streams of information, join new communities.
The number of possible journeys has multiplied.
Coincidentally, this relates to the rise of adoption of technology from about 15-20 years ago - Smartphone, Internet, Social Media, etc. Technology intensifies the ‘moving on’ effect. At the very moment an experience captures our attention, another one appears to replace it. A notification arrives. A new video trends. A new song begins playing. Before we have fully absorbed one moment, the next one has already claimed our attention.
Earlier, the world occasionally forced us to linger. A newspaper story stayed with us until the next edition arrived the following morning. A cricket victory remained in conversation until the next series months later. A popular song stayed on the radio long enough to embed itself in memory.
Those pauses between experiences allowed life to form chapters. Today those pauses are shrinking.
This does not mean we are experiencing less. If anything, we are experiencing far more — more music, more films, more news, more conversations. But experiences do not stay long enough to acquire depth. They are replaced before they have fully arrived.
Meaning often forms in the act of staying with something for a while — thinking about it, discussing it, revisiting it. When life moves too quickly from one scene to another, those reflective spaces quietly disappear.
Perhaps that is why reunions feel so powerful. For a few hours the rush of the present slows down. Stories return. Forgotten incidents resurface. Memories regain their colour.
In a world where life increasingly resembles a continuous stream of moments, these pauses begin to feel precious.
They are, in a sense, the intermissions of life.
And it may well be during those intermissions that our experiences finally get the chance to become memories.
News moves even faster. One moment everyone is debating the curious episode involving robots episode at an AI Summit by Galgotias University. A few days later the conversation has shifted to something else entirely. I’m sure the Middle East interest will die within 72 hours of the ceasefire. Why, even in close circles, we hardly are talking about the India victory in the T20 World Cup..Everyone is busy discussing the upcoming IPL season.
All of this suggests that we have collectively become very good at something: moving on.
Moving on from one news cycle to another. From one cultural moment to the next. From one experience to the next before the previous one has had time to settle.
This pattern is visible even in the world of work. Earlier generations often spent decades within a single organisation, accumulating not just experience but also stories and shared memories. Today careers resemble a series of shorter engagements. LinkedIn is full of project-based work, consultants, fractional ‘something’. Employees move on from companies faster than before — and companies, it must be said, have also become quicker to move on from employees. Best part?, Neither side seems particularly surprised by the arrangement.
Part of the explanation lies in the rhythm of modern life. Earlier, life followed a relatively sequential path. School led to college, college to a job, and the job often stretched across decades. Experiences arrived in an orderly progression, like stations on a long train journey. When something unusual occurred, it interrupted the flow. People paused, talked about it, revisited it.
Today the map of life looks less like a straight railway line and more like the subway map of Tokyo — a dense network of lines intersecting, diverging and reconnecting in every direction. At any moment one can change tracks: switch careers, explore new interests, consume new streams of information, join new communities.
The number of possible journeys has multiplied.
Coincidentally, this relates to the rise of adoption of technology from about 15-20 years ago - Smartphone, Internet, Social Media, etc. Technology intensifies the ‘moving on’ effect. At the very moment an experience captures our attention, another one appears to replace it. A notification arrives. A new video trends. A new song begins playing. Before we have fully absorbed one moment, the next one has already claimed our attention.
Earlier, the world occasionally forced us to linger. A newspaper story stayed with us until the next edition arrived the following morning. A cricket victory remained in conversation until the next series months later. A popular song stayed on the radio long enough to embed itself in memory.
Those pauses between experiences allowed life to form chapters. Today those pauses are shrinking.
This does not mean we are experiencing less. If anything, we are experiencing far more — more music, more films, more news, more conversations. But experiences do not stay long enough to acquire depth. They are replaced before they have fully arrived.
Meaning often forms in the act of staying with something for a while — thinking about it, discussing it, revisiting it. When life moves too quickly from one scene to another, those reflective spaces quietly disappear.
Perhaps that is why reunions feel so powerful. For a few hours the rush of the present slows down. Stories return. Forgotten incidents resurface. Memories regain their colour.
In a world where life increasingly resembles a continuous stream of moments, these pauses begin to feel precious.
They are, in a sense, the intermissions of life.
And it may well be during those intermissions that our experiences finally get the chance to become memories.
Comments