Life, Subscribed

Every week, my phone reminds me of my new relationship with the world. An SMS or a WhatsApp notification for something I have, but never actually own. Access to Amazon Prime, Spotify, Kindle, Dropbox that stores the fragments of my life, books and files I might never read, in places I will never visit. There was a time not very long ago when the things we ‘wanted’ were the things we owned. Music came on tapes and CDs whose covers we gently straightened after use. Encyclopaedias lined shelves, heavy with authority. Books carried the thumbprints of those who read them before us. These objects announced themselves by occupying space.

Today, so much of what we “have” never actually comes home. Music floats in the cyber space, movies wait in the cloud in queue, a verse of poetry arrives through a clean, content-approved notification. Even memories — once tucked into boxes or photo albums — now live on remote servers, rented back to us through storage plans. The world has shifted from possession to access, so quietly that we barely noticed.

Ownership used to demand care. A CD needed to be handled with respect, a book returned in almost the same condition. That responsibility tied us to the object. Subscription frees us from all that — we are not caretakers anymore, just users who keep the meter running. Convenience is the new covenant. Do nothing, and everything auto-renews.

In parallel, even the self has taken on a subscription model. Morning calm comes via a mindfulness app. Fitness arrives monthly, one payment at a time. Motivation can be unlocked in weekly instalments. We rent our discipline and outsource our resolve because becoming who we want to be is now a product category. It is as if identity itself has become a series of trial versions — cancel anytime.

Ironically, ancient wisdom had long insisted that nothing material is truly ours. The wise spoke on the futility of, ‘This is Mine’…. the digital economy has simply given that idea a business plan. The difference is that earlier, the idea that the eternal soul lives in a rented body and letting go was a spiritual act. Today, it is a commercial feature.

And the signs of this shift are everywhere: photographs that exist only as icons floating in a cloud; childhood memories secured by subscription plans; remastered playlists replacing music that once crackled because we had played it too often; or you either see-or-miss TV shows

What has changed isn’t merely how we consume things, but how we relate to them. The temporary has become the default, and permanence a problem we would rather not solve. The weight of ownership has been replaced by the lightness of access — and with that, the meaning of “having” has quietly dissolved into “streaming.”

Maybe this is the most unnoticed transformation of our time: when everything is rented, what remains precious is the rare thing we can still call our own — a page with our handwriting in the margin, a song worn out by affection, a thought we stayed with long enough to make personal.

In a life subscribed to everything and committed to little, permanence doesn’t arrive automatically anymore. It waits to be noticed, then chosen…..and then defended.