The Way We Used to Live

Think about your grandparents' Tuesday morning. They probably woke up to an alarm clock, not a phone. They read the news on paper. If they wanted to meet a friend, they agreed a time and a place in advance — and then they simply turned up, because there was no way to send a message saying "running 10 minutes late".

Where the day begins

The biggest change is not one big thing. It is a hundred small ones. People used to keep a phone in the hallway; now they keep it under the pillow. They used to buy a newspaper on the way to work; now they read the same story before they get out of bed.

Notice how we describe this. We say "I used to read a paper" for a past habit that has stopped. We say "I didn't use to check my phone in bed" for something that was not true before, but is now.

The commute that disappeared

For most of the twentieth century, work happened in a building somewhere else. You got up, you commuted, you came home. Then, quite suddenly, millions of people stopped. Offices emptied, kitchen tables became desks, and many people discovered they had two extra hours a day.

Not everyone liked it. Some people missed the walk to the station — a quiet gap between home and work that made both feel separate. Others say they will never go back.

We didn't decide to change our daily lives. We just looked up one day and found that we had.

Talking, but differently

Staying in touch used to take effort. You wrote a letter, or you waited until the evening when calls were cheaper. Today it takes three seconds — and that has changed what friendship feels like. We know small daily details about people we have not seen for years.

The numbers behind this are dramatic. In 2005, about 16% of the world's population used the internet. By 2024 it was around 68% — more than two thirds of everyone alive.

What we got back

It is easy to tell this story as a loss, but that is not fair. People hardly ever spend a whole evening waiting for one television show now. Chores take less time than they did: a washing machine does in an hour what once took a morning. That time went somewhere.

Many people used that time to take up something new. Others simply sleep more. Both are reasonable answers.

Getting used to it

Here is a useful difference in English. "I used to live in a village" describes the past. "I am getting used to living in a city" describes something new that is becoming normal. The first looks back; the second looks forward.

Nowadays, change arrives faster than we get used to it. Perhaps that is the real story of everyday life: not that it changed, but that it never stops.