The Things Convenience Takes Away
A story by Kurt Vonnegut has been making the rounds again lately. I have encountered it several times in different forms, usually clipped down for social media. It is easy to understand why people keep sharing it. The story comes from another technological age, yet it somehow feels written for ours.
In 1995, Inc. Technology asked Vonnegut what he thought about living in an increasingly computerized world. Harper’s Magazine later published part of the interview in September 1996 under the title “Technology and Me.”[1] Vonnegut explained that he still wrote on a typewriter. After marking up his pages in pencil, he would call his typist, Carol, and tell her he was sending another batch.
Then he would leave his apartment to buy an envelope.
His wife pointed out the obvious absurdity. He was not poor. Why not buy a thousand envelopes, have them delivered, put them in a closet, and never make the trip again?
Vonnegut’s answer was simply, “Hush.”
He walked to the newsstand. There were people ahead of him buying candy and lottery tickets, so he stood in line and talked with them. He spoke with the woman behind the counter. Then he took his envelope to the postal counter down the street, where, he joked, he was secretly in love with the woman who worked there. He addressed the envelope, stamped it, put it in the mailbox, and walked home.
“And I’ve had a hell of a good time,” he said.[1]
The story is engaging because his wife is obviously right. Buying envelopes one at a time is inefficient. Vonnegut does not really dispute that. He notices something else. The inefficient part contains nearly everything interesting.
There is the walk, the strangers in line, the shopkeeper, the postal clerk, and the possibility of a conversation he did not schedule and could not predict. Even getting his pocket picked on one visit became part of the story because it resulted in meeting a police officer. Someone designing Vonnegut’s day for maximum efficiency could eliminate almost all of it.
That possibility has only grown since he told the story. He had to imagine a computer beside his bed that might allow him never to leave the house. Today the envelope itself is mostly unnecessary. A document can move across the world without paper, a typist, a stamp, a postal clerk, or a walk down Second Avenue.
Much of modern convenience genuinely improves life. There is little virtue in standing in a line merely because previous generations had no alternative, and inconvenience does not become meaningful simply by being inconvenient. Still, Vonnegut noticed that efficiency measures only one dimension of an experience. It can tell us how quickly the manuscript reached Carol. It cannot account very well for everything that happened on the way.
Fifteen centuries earlier, Benedict of Nursia confronted a very different world, but he seems unusually alert to the same distinction. He wrote his Rule in sixth-century Italy for communities of monks attempting to live together with some order amid an unstable age. The Rule survives in part because Benedict paid extraordinary attention to ordinary things. He considered when people eat and sleep, how they work and pray, and even what should happen when someone knocks at the door.
He organized the monastery around rhythms rather than continuous productivity. There are hours for manual work and hours for reading. Meals happen together. Prayer repeatedly interrupts the workday. Benedict is startlingly specific about these interruptions. When the bell sounds for the Divine Office, he instructs the monks to put down whatever they are doing and come to prayer, adding that “nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God.”[2]
From the standpoint of uninterrupted work, the bell is terribly inefficient. Imagine trying to manage a modern organization that way. Several times during the day everyone stops whatever appears urgent, leaves unfinished work sitting where it is, and turns attention somewhere else. Benedict understood that something could be lost when the work in front of us becomes the measure of everything else.
The same instinct appears in his treatment of hospitality. “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ,” Benedict writes.[3] A guest, almost by definition, interferes with the plan. Someone arrives who was not part of the schedule. Food must be prepared and attention shifts. Benedict does not describe the visitor primarily as a disruption that needs managing. He asks the community to look more carefully at who has appeared at the door.
That may be the deeper connection to Vonnegut’s envelope.
The newsstand clerk was not necessary to the transmission of a manuscript. Neither was the woman at the post office or the strangers buying lottery tickets. From the perspective of the task, they were friction between Vonnegut and his destination. From the perspective of a human life, they were part of the day itself.
Modern technology has become extraordinarily good at removing friction. Groceries appear at the door. Meetings occur without travel. Bills pay themselves. Entertainment waits instantly on a screen. A question can be answered without asking another person. None of this is inherently a loss. Anyone who has spent an afternoon waiting at a government office understands the limits of romanticizing inconvenience.
The more interesting question is what else disappears when the friction disappears.
A familiar cashier eventually knows your name because you kept returning to the same place. A neighbor can become a friend because you happened to be outside at the same time often enough. A walk undertaken for a trivial errand can become twenty minutes in which nothing demands immediate attention. These encounters are difficult to optimize because they depend partly on circumstances we did not arrange.
Benedict built an entire way of life around remaining available to such circumstances. His monastery has structure, perhaps more structure than almost any modern person would willingly accept. Yet that structure repeatedly keeps a person from disappearing completely into personal preference and private efficiency. The bell calls people away from their work. Meals bring them back to the same table. Guests arrive on their own schedules. Other people remain inconveniently present.
Benedictine stability begins to look less like resistance to change and more like a decision to remain somewhere long enough for relationships to acquire weight.
The wisdom of the Rule does not require a monastery. Its rhythms can still illuminate an ordinary day. A meal eaten without a screen leaves room for another person. A few quiet minutes before messages begin allow the day to start without immediately surrendering attention. A walk does not always need to become exercise or an opportunity to consume something through headphones. Returning to the same shop, neighborhood, church, park, or café can slowly turn anonymous places into familiar ones.
The point is not to manufacture inconvenience. It is to remain available.
Benedict’s interruptions offer something similar. The bell did not signal that work was unimportant. Monks worked because the work needed doing. The bell simply reminded them that work did not possess an unlimited claim on their attention. There were things worth stopping for.
Hospitality carries the idea further. Benedict knew a community needed order, boundaries, and responsibilities, yet he deliberately made room within that order for the person who arrived unexpectedly. The guest could not be reduced to an interruption because the interruption had a face.
Vonnegut’s little ritual did something similar. He could have stored a thousand envelopes in a closet. Instead, he kept giving himself a reason to go outside.
There is probably no need to start buying envelopes one at a time. The lesson becomes silly if reduced to deliberately making ordinary tasks harder. Vonnegut was not really defending envelopes, and Benedict was not defending inconvenience. Both noticed something that becomes easy to miss when efficiency becomes the measure of a day.
Convenience can give time back to us. The question is what happens to that time once we have it.
Perhaps that is why Vonnegut’s story keeps circulating thirty years later. The envelope is obsolete, but the choice behind it remains familiar. There are still moments when the slower way brings us into contact with a place, a person, or a part of the day that the faster way would allow us to pass by.
Not every friction needs to be removed.
Something might happen on the way.
Sources
[1] Kurt Vonnegut, “Technology and Me,” Harper’s Magazine, September 1996. Harper’s identifies the piece as an excerpt from an interview with Vonnegut published in the November 1995 issue of Inc. Technology, in which he was asked about living in an increasingly computerized world. (Harper’s Magazine)
[2] The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 43, “Tardiness at the Work of God or at Table.” Benedict instructs the monk to set aside what is in hand when the signal for the Divine Office sounds and writes, “nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God.” (The Rule of Benedict)
[3] The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 53, “The Reception of Guests.” Benedict writes, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ,” echoing Matthew 25:35. (The Rule of Benedict)