①We have a problem, and the strange thing is that we not only know about it but also celebrate it. Just today, someone boasted to me that she was so busy she’s averaged four hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. She wasn’t complaining; she was proud of the fact. She is not alone.

②Why are typically rational (理智的) people so irrational in their behavior? The answer is that we’re in the midst of a bubble. I call it “The More Bubble.”

③The nature of bubbles is that something is absurdly overvalued until-eventually-the bubble bursts, and we’re left wondering why we were so irrationally animated in the first place. The thing we’re overvaluing now is the opinion of doing it all, having it all, achieving it all.

④This bubble is being enabled by a combination of three powerful trends: smart phones, social media, and extreme consumerism. The result is not just information overload, but opinion overload. We are more aware than at any time in history of what everyone else is doing and therefore, what we should be doing. In the process, we have been sold a bill of goods: that success means being supermen and superwomen who can get it all done. Of course we boasted about being busy—it’s code for being successful and important.

⑤And our answer to the problem of more is always more. We need more technology to help us create more technologies. We need to shift our workload to free up our own time to do yet even more.

⑥Luckily, there is a solution to the pursuit of more: the pursuit of less, but better. A growing number of people are making this change. I call these people Essentialists.

⑦These people are designing their lives around what is essential and removing everything else. These people arrange to have actual weekends (during which they are not working). They create technology-free zones in their homes. They trade time on Facebook with calling those few friends who really matter to them. Instead of running to different meetings, they put space on their calendars to get important work done.

⑧So we have two choices: we can be among the last people caught up in “The More Bubble” or we can join the growing community of Essentialists and get more of what matters in our one precious life.

The year 2020 marks the beginning of the decade of the yold, or the “young old”, as the Japanese call people aged between 65 and 75. One might therefore expect peak retirement for baby-boomers born in 1955-60 in the coming years, but they are not retiring quietly into the background. By continuing to work, and staying socially involved, the yold will change the world, as they have done several times before at different stages of their lives.

The yold are healthier, wealthier and more numerous (众多) than previous generations of seniors. 134million 65-to-74-year-olds account for 11% of the population in rich countries in 2020, up from 99million (8%) in 2000. Health worsens with age, but the yold are resisting the decline better than most: of the 3.7 years of increased life expectancy in rich countries between 2000 and 2015. The yold are also better off: between 1989 and 2013, the median (中位的) wealth of families headed by someone over 62 in America rose by 40% , while the wealth of all other age groups declined.

The yold are not just any group of old people. The over-60s are one of the fastest-growing groups of customers of the airline business. They are also changing education. They are challenging the traditional expectations of the retired as people who wear slippers and look after the grandchildren. That will affect consumer, service and financial markets.

The rise of the yold will be a blessing to themselves, to economies and to societies. But for all this to happen, three big things will have to change. The most important is public attitudes towards older people, and in particular the expectation that 60-somethings ought to be putting their feet up and quietly retiring into the background. Government policies will have to change, too. The retirement age in many rich countries is still below the age to which many people want to work. Public policy makes retirement a cliff edge instead of a ramp (斜坡). Third, higher numbers of healthy yold people will require great changes in health spending although the yold will still be comparative healthy and active over the next decade.

It was a cold Saturday night in February. Some 200 New Yorkers carefully made their way to the reservoir (水库) in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the magical snowy owl, who had touched down in the park the week before in what was reported as the first visit there by the species in more than 130 years.

Except for a few excited screams from children, people were quiet — patiently awaiting the owl’s arrival at the reservoir’s north gatehouse. The snowy owl did not disappoint. She flew down from the darkness and surveyed the water and the people holding phones and cameras before taking off into the night to the applause of her many fans. They simply wanted to see this lovely creature whose improbable appearance seemed to signify hope after the lockdown.

New Yorkers who had long taken Central Park for granted felt a renewed love for this rectangle of green in the heart of the big city and, of course, its amazing wildlife. That the park is a beautiful and essential refuge is something that humans have only come to fully appreciate during these recent times of uncertainty.

Central Park was originally planned and constructed during another difficult time in the nation’s history — in the years before and during the American Civil War. Unlike many European parks that had originally been built for the aristocracy (贵族), Central Park was designed as a public space. In its chief architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s words, the poor and rich alike could “easily go there after their day’s work is done” and “stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the noise of the streets.”

As spring turns into summer, we see people sitting on the grass or benches — catching some sun, having family picnics, or tapping away on their laptops and iPads. Just being in proximity to other people in Central Park gave us a sense of community — the sense that we would somehow persevere.