do you remember the last time you swung?🌹

or the last time you did something for no reason?

one of the things i will never forget from my childhood is the two swings, one green and one red (can’t fully remember if it was red and blue or green and red), in the park in front of the block where i lived with my family back then. the picture of that park is still so clear in my mind, and i remember it better than i remember a lot of things from that age. each swing had metal bars, a wooden seat, and a chain that acted as a seatbelt for us kids. i loved swinging, but i was always afraid of doing what my friends did, which was swinging so hard and so high that they went perpendicular to the ground and turned fully upside down. for me it was enough to swing as much as i could, because that was all it took to hold onto nothing for half a second, or however long it lasted.

the feeling i had on that swing is something i will never forget. sometimes we indeed competed over who could swing the hardest, but the competition was never the reason. i’d have done it even if i never met anyone there or was seen by anyone doing it. it was a thing that didn’t lead me anywhere. all i did was get on, swing, get off, and go home, with nothing left behind. the only proof that it happened was the feeling, which was already fading by the time i walked home.

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do you remember the last time you did something like that? i am not referring to the swing specifically, but to the act of doing something for no reason at all. just to do it.

i personally can’t find a recent example in my own life. almost everything i do now points somewhere past itself. i mean, i rest so i can work better, i walk so i can think, i read so i can use it later, i do this to serve that. the doing is never just the doing anymore; it’s always in service of something downstream.

but the real problem might not be that we do things for a reason. we have always done things for reasons, but what has changed is what the reason has become. it used to be the feeling, or the person in front of you, or even the thing itself. now the reason is almost always some version of being seen and getting validation.

whether we like it or not, social platforms are where most of us spend a big part of our time, and one of their worst influences is that they taught us to think this way. for some time, they were truly social, and being on them was a real joy. but once being seen became the whole currency and “indirectly” forced us to become fluent in it, we started shaping everything we do around whether it will be seen and by how many.

i’ve done it myself, and sadly i still catch myself doing it from time to time. i’ve made things because i’ve been taught that’s what works, and i hated every one of them even as i was working on them. and the worst part is that this obsession didn’t stay just inside the app or while i was working on the thing. it spread into the life i lived once i turned it off, and most of my days had become a narration!!!

back in the day, a well-photographed meal belonged to the brand selling it, and we all knew it. now the same photo belongs to the person at the next table and to me. what used to be a brand’s job has become everyone’s. we’ve reached a point where the moment no longer counts if there isn’t proof of it or a metric to validate it.

there was no proof that the swing had happened, and that was the whole point of it. it happened and then it was gone, and it belonged to no one but me. but now the moment only counts if it’s captured and validated by something that doesn’t even care about you in the first place. i’d even say that the moment we start capturing it is also the moment we are no longer in the thing.

the swing and the scroll are both repetitive, and both go back and forth and arrive nowhere. they are both a loop i could stay inside for hours (theoretically). but one of them filled me up, and the other emptied me. so the difference may not be the motion itself, but rather where it points. the swing pointed nowhere and referred to nothing, while the scroll points at everything except the person doing it.

charli cohen put it really well in one of our exchanges:

charli cohen@charlicohen

@eduardmsmr they want our labour in return for the illusion we might find belonging if we try hard enough

9:36 AM · Jun 30, 2026 · 76 Views

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1 Reply · 2 Likes

that, to me, is the whole trade.

we keep feeding the thing, hoping that belonging finally arrives, but we’re at a point where the lack of belonging has never felt so deep. and still, for some reason, we stay and keep pointing our entire lives outward at something that does not know we exist and would not even care if we stopped.

i’ve been telling myself that we’ve forgotten how to do things for no reason, and i think i was wrong. the swing was for the purest reason there is, which is itself. the feeling was the whole of it, and it was already complete in the doing!!

so maybe it was never about reasonlessness. what we’ve lost is the capacity to do a thing that refers to nothing beyond itself. a thing that’s just the thing and not a step toward, proof of, content about, or in service of. and i realize the truest reason was always there. so:

do you remember the last time you were on a swing? go find one. don’t film it. don’t tell anyone. get on, and swing, and get off, and let it disappear.

it will be the most reason you’ve had in a long time.🌹