I spend a lot of time trying to skip cutscenes.

Sometimes it looks like gaming to skip the Long Bus Ride cutscene, sometimes it looks like doomscrolling to skip the Boring Lecture #5 cutscene.

Most of the time, it looks like Interneting™ to skip a Mundane Life Occurrence.

You and I both know that skipping cutscenes is extremely tempting—why not just check my phone to skip forward ten minutes? I mean, waiting for people/bus/whatever is so boring. What would I be doing with that time, anyway?

But I notice that excessing cutscene-skipping leaves me a bit, um, stupid? Zombie-like? You know what I mean. I’ll look up from my phone, load back in, and…wait, where am I again? What time is it? What was I supposed to be doing? And an embarrassingly large amount of the time, I don’t even notice that the Mundane Life Occurrence has ended—I’ll be mashing A to skip through the cutscene, only to realize halfway through the gameplay that only hitting A is not exactly a winning strategy.

I prefer not to be a zombie, so I’m trying not to skip the cutscenes anymore. I’m pretty sure this is what people call “being present”. Before, I didn’t really understand what they meant, but I think it’s something like this: being present is appreciating the subtle touches in the visuals and music, noticing how each detail makes the world breathe. It’s leaning in and getting lost in the world, and it’s also sitting back and letting the world wash over you.

It’s resisting the urge to skip the cutscenes.