HOW OTHER THINGS END

This is how the text exchange ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. -T. S. Eliot

- REUVEN PERLMAN

This is how the text exchange ends.

Not with an explicit farewell but with a two-day pause followed by a thumbs-up-emoji reaction.

This is how the career ends.

Not with a retirement party and a gold watch but with a second career in the gig economy.

This is how doing laundry ends.

Not with crisp, clean bedding but with your sheet coming out of the dryer balled up in your duvet cover, still soaking wet.

This is how dinner in your thirties ends.

Not with a satisfying dessert but with a single square of dark chocolate snapped off a seventy-five-percent-cacao bar from Whole Foods. O.K., maybe two squares ... What the heck—it's Friday.

This is how the smartphone era ends.

Not with a cultural rethink of the role that technology plays in our lives but with scrolling past a video of Jonathan Haidt musing about the harm of narrative-free content to watch a clip of a broccoli-haired teenager punching his grandpa in the back while Hozier sings, “I take my whiskey neat.”