Having lived in the city for the last two years, I’ve come to realize that a large body of the American people spends a great deal of time under stress. A few weeks ago I was actually early for class, so I stopped to talk to a guy on the street who was asking for donations for some charity walk that may or may not have existed. I ended up giving him the only dollar I had left, because hey, at least he made an effort instead of just asking for a handout. He even had fliers and everything.

Anyway one comment that he made while we were talking was that people in Boston are always in too big a hurry to give a moment of their time. Which, when I thought about it, is true for me most of the time too. You’re always running late for something, be it class or an appointment or lunch or whatever. Events are tightly scheduled in our solitary worlds.

That said, it seems like people can always use a psychological break from the tension, and a lot of times these come in the form of time savers. Anything that saves time, or even appears to save time is a wonderful thing.

Which brings me to my point. Life needs more buttons. Allow me to elaborate. Have you ever been in an elevator pumping the “Door Close” button, and stop to think about how the elevator doesn’t actually operate any faster while you’re pushing it? My theory is that the button isn’t even connected to anything, it’s just there so people can push it and feel better about themselves.

One can’t deny though, even if it doesn’t in fact do anything, that it does feel rather soothing to have a time-saving button that you can lean on. I think many of the buttons at intersections, you know for pedestrians, operate on the same principle.

So ultimately this begs the question, why not more buttons on everything? Why shouldn’t subways and buses have “Go Faster” buttons all over them? Or maybe clocks could start having “Slow Down Time” buttons that you can just push when you’ve got fast-approaching deadlines. I could go on.

But the fact is, most people don’t understand enough about anything to ever question whether the buttons do anything or not. Heck, I don’t know anything about elevators, so how can I know what the buttons actually do? So why not give people more buttons to press? In the end, I think it would lead to an overall healthier and slightly more stress-free existence.