Attention — The Only Currency

There is a quiet theft happening every hour of your life, and you have been trained to call it convenience. It does not announce itself. It arrives as a buzz in your pocket, a red badge on an icon, a feed that refreshes the moment you reach the bottom. Each pull is small. Each feels like a choice. And yet, by the end of an ordinary day, hours have vanished and you cannot say where they went. Not into anything you built. Not into anyone you love. Just gone — paid out, in fragments, to systems engineered to take them. I want to make a claim that sounds dramatic until you sit with it: attention is the only currency you actually own. Money can b…