I ran across this lament from Thomas a Kempis in a piece by Virginia writer Liza Field:

“Our thoughts are given to things which avail little, but that which is vital we ignore. The whole man flows out to things external, and unless he speedily recover himself, he willingly remains immersed in them.”

It’s a fifteenth-century complaint, but it still has a modern ring.

These kinds of ancient quotations used to be invoked as part of an argument that distraction is nothing new, that people get past it, and we should stop worrying about whether Facebook is making us stupid.

Now, a piece like this can end with a call to relearn the kinds of mental disciplines that Kempis would have practiced to “recover himself.” There’s such a thing as progress after all.