“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s, there are few.”
– Shunryu Suzuki
HERE we are: The video call notification chimes. Your mother stares at her phone, tapping frantically. “I can see you, but you can’t see me – wait, now I can’t see you either.” Her voice rises with panic. Your daughter’s birthday. The cake is already lit. In another city, your mother’s finger hovers over buttons that might as well be hieroglyphics.
“Just press the camera icon, Ma.” But which one? There are three camera icons. The call drops. The candles melt. Later, she’ll say she’s too old for this. Later, you’ll feel the guilt settle in your chest like a stone. Look around. How many of our elders are locked outside the rooms where their families now gather?
This is the ‘Invisible Exile’, the modern cruelty of connection that excludes. We build digital town squares and assume everyone can simply walk through the door. But for those who spent seventy years in a world of rotary phones and handwritten letters, that door is a shifting maze.
The lock changes every update. The key they finally learned to use no longer fits. And we, impatient and fluent, stand on the other side wondering why they won’t just come in.Could your parent navigate your phone for five minutes without asking for help?
But here’s the brutal question: Is this technology truly connecting them, or is it becoming the very wall that separates them from us? The data exposes an uncomfortable truth. A study tracking seniors over three years found that 73 per cent who joined social media reported initial excitement.
But within 18 months, over half described feelings of inadequacy, confusion, and a deepening sense that the world was leaving them behind. They see their grandchildren’s lives in fragments – birthday posts they stumble upon days late, inside jokes in comments they don’t understand, group chats moving too fast to follow.
We promised them connection. We delivered another way to feel obsolete. Meanwhile, they watch us – the fluent ones – and see something else entirely. They see us at dinner, half-present, our eyes glazing as we scroll. They see their grandchildren, faces lit by blue light, bodies in the room but minds elsewhere. And in their quiet moments, they ask themselves: Is this what I’m struggling so hard to join? Is this the future I’m supposed to embrace?
So, what are we to do in this widening divide? We can drag them forward, insisting they master every platform while their confidence crumbles. Or we can pause – truly pause – and ask a more honest question: What if the problem isn’t that they can’t keep up, but that we’ve built a system no one should have to keep up with? This is where ancient balance becomes our salvation.
The Buddha’s Middle Way was never about compromise. It was about discernment – the capacity to see clearly what serves life and what merely complicates it. He used the image of the lute string: too tight, it snaps; too loose, no music plays. But here’s what we forget – the string is tuned for the musician, not for the instrument.
The question is not “How much technology can my mother handle?” but “How much technology does my mother’s life actually need?” Standing in the wreckage of that dropped video call, the real question emerges: Every app and every update, or the few tools that genuinely matter? Digital fluency or digital sufficiency? The exhausting race to keep up, or the dignity of knowing what’s enough? Strip away the marketing. Strip away the fear of missing out. What remains?
For your mother, perhaps it’s one thing: seeing her granddaughter blow out the candles in real time. Not Instagram. Not TikTok. Not Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or whatever replaces them next month. Just FaceTime. Or WhatsApp. One bridge. Strong enough to carry what matters.
This is the first principle: ruthless essentialism. The Dao teaches us that the master does not collect ten thousand tools. The master knows the one tool that opens every door. For the elderly, this is liberation – permission to say no to everything except what truly connects them to the people they love. But knowing what’s essential means nothing without the strength to defend it.
This is where Stoic resolve, anchored in the Islamic principle of tawakkul (trust in sufficiency), becomes their armour. The world will insist they need more. Their grandchildren will say, “Everyone’s on this now.” The advertisements will whisper that relevance requires presence on every platform. And in those moments, tawakkul is the quiet voice that says: You are not required to be everywhere. Your worth is not measured in followers or updates or your ability to decode the latest interface.
Epictetus taught that freedom lives in the space between stimulus and response. When the notification chimes, when the family group chat explodes with 30 unread messages, when the latest app becomes “essential” – in that space before the anxious scramble to comply, there is choice. The choice to ask: Does this serve me, or am I beginning to serve it? This is the synthesis – technology as servant, not master.
And here lies the unspoken contract between generations. The elderly do not need our impatience. They need our respect. When your mother asks for the fifth time how to unmute herself on Zoom, that is not failure – that is courage. She is trying. She is showing up in a world that no longer speaks her native language. But we – the fluent ones – we have work to do too.
Stop sending her links to 17 different platforms. Choose one. Sit beside her, not across from her. Teach at her pace, not yours. Show her how to silence notifications that spike her anxiety. Curate her feed so it shows grandchildren, not strangers’ manufactured lives. Explain that she doesn’t need to post, doesn’t need to perform, doesn’t need to prove anything. She can simply watch. Simply be there, on her terms.
Most importantly: call her. Not text. Call. Let her hear your voice without needing to navigate anything. That is connection. The rest is theatre. But the deepest truth is this: they must also choose.
Just as a tree cannot be forced to grow in soil that poisons it, our elders cannot be forced into a digital landscape that depletes them. And this is not defeat – this is wisdom. The muscle we are building here is not technical proficiency. It is discernment. The ability to know which bridges lead home and which lead only into the wilderness. This discernment is forged in small moments. It is forged when your father closes the tablet after seeing his grandson’s soccer goal and feels satisfied, rather than scrolling into the void. It is forged when your mother says, “I don’t need Instagram,” and you – instead of protesting – say, “You’re right.”
This is the foundation: intentional, self-compassionate, fiercely boundaried engagement. Not keeping up. Not staying relevant. Simply staying connected to what matters. And the method is a single, repeatable practice. So let us begin the work. Just once today, when the pressure to master another platform rises, let us pause and ask: “Does this technology bring me closer to the people I love, or is it just another way to feel left behind?” We need no immediate answer.
The power lies not in the answer, but in the asking. In that sliver of space, dignity is reclaimed. We choose connection over competence. We choose the warmth of a voice over the cold necessity of an update. This is how we build bridges that hold. The technology will keep changing. But love – the reason we wanted the bridge in the first place – does not require the latest app. It requires only presence. Theirs. And ours.
Let the balance begin with this single, mindful question.
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at sufiansarawak@gmail.com.
