Everyday, you wake up, and you open your inbox.

Be it email, slack, whatsapp, instagram, or your news app.
You are opening an inbox.

It’s insane that the word feels so normal now.
There hasn’t always been such word as ‘inbox’

Inbox is the combination of the words in and box.
Your mail in the box.

It went from:
– mail in your mailbox to
– email in your inbox to
– messages in your whatsapp/slack chats to
– posts in your instagram/twitter timeline

What checking your inbox today means is:
What happened in the world when I was idle?

The problem with that is that so much has likely happened, that your FOMO makes your brain itch to open that inbox constantly.

It’s also an insanely large amount of information for one homo sapien brain.

But, wait a minute… while it’s understandable why we’re so obsessed with what happened in the outside world, how come we’re not as interested in our inside world? And I’m not even talking about anything spiritual.

There are so many thoughts that are in the back of our heads that we never allowed to come out from the subconscious to the conscious. So many conclusions on problems that our subconscious brain has miraculously worked out in our sleep. And many more that we never processed because we never sat down to think about them without external stimuli.

Add to that the trillions of living beings (bacteria) in our bodies going about their days to stay alive (and in the process, keep your body alive, hopefully). And the 78 machines (organs), each consuming energy and producing output. How often do you check up on them?

Funny enough, the word ‘inbox’ sounds like it’s about looking within, but it’s actually the opposite. Checking your inbox is checking what’s happening outside of your existence (body, mind, and soul).

There are many benefits to that. We are social animals at the end of the day; we care about what’s happening to people around us. But if we don’t look enough within, we may lose ourselves.

If you don’t look within, you cease to exist. You may be alive, but you’re drifting with the tide. Soon enough, you lose sense of identity. You merge with the group.

Let’s coin a new term and call it the innerbox. We should all check your innerbox before our inbox 🙂