Real life's a mess

Two days ago, I organized a discussion group lunch. This would be the group's second gathering, my first time organizing. Though fifteen people were invited, the round table at our chosen restaurant only comfortably fits nine.

(A discussion lunch can only be so big, anyway.)

The invite went out, and within hours, all seats were claimed. Everything was going smoothly ... until a new guest, a promising new addition since the first lunch, reached out. This individual had missed the cutoff but emailed me directly, asking to join. I responded right away, explaining we were maxed out for this lunch — but he’d be first in line if someone canceled. I also left open the possibility of squeezing in a tenth seat.

Unbeknownst to me, he’d also emailed another attendee and the organizer of the prior lunch. Unaware I’d already responded, both replied and pointed him back to me — unintentionally giving the impression there was still room at the table.

Ugh.

This guest was just acting in good faith, trying to get a seat. Meanwhile, though my original response made sense at the time, now it felt like a gaffe. Would I come off as rude to this man I'd never met? I probably appeared disorganized to him. Meanwhile, granting his request could make me look inconsistent with the broader group.

As these thoughts raced through my head, I took a breath. Everything is fine. This will work out. We’ll make it work. Nothing’s perfect. This is life.

This hiccup revealed something vital: Doing things in real life is messy.

Organizing anything involving people, decisions, and constraints — some unavoidable, some unforeseen — is fluid. You have to adapt. Life isn't a transaction but a negotiation.

This lunch was an example of how real life is full of challenges that don’t follow neat rules.

By comparison, digital life lets us dodge this mess. Digital has guardrails — enforced as defaults through software and the conventions of modern media. Online, we control the terms. Texts and emails are consumed on our schedule, shielding us from the real world’s chaos. Online, I can order goods, services, food, and never deal with anyone. Something profound is lost in this process.

That's not all.

Online is fake. Everything is curated. The news, communications, content — all are now products that have been crafted and readied for mass production and consumption by anyone ... or no one.

Online is safe. I know, people can be mean online, but the downside is almost always clipped. You can always block. Ignore. Leave unread. Close the tab.

Online is a game to be played. You get infinite lives, which makes you care less about the one life that matters.

No surprise, the more online I am, the less equipped I feel to handle real life. Digital makes me brittle. Navigating real-life messiness teaches me to surf uncertainty.

Things can go wrong and still turn out right. Take the entrepreneurial mindset that "you can just do things." This mindset demands assertion. You have to say yes even when you don't know exactly how the work will be done. You have to say no and push back even if it risks judgment. Doing things in the real world is a skill sharpened by practice. A digital existence, with its rigid, predictable structures, lets that agency atrophy.

(Schooling, with its rule-bound systems, does the same. But that’s another story.)

Our tech-driven world, obsessed with ease, helps us avoid friction. In the short term, we get the quick win, the instant gratification. In the long term, we lose more than we realize. Do you want to experience life passively? Or do you want to push through the chaos and change the world?

You can avoid dealing with the mess of real life — but you shouldn’t. Embrace the mess — that’s where life happens, where what you do is real.